The Ruler of the Southern Ocean was Shu (Fast), the Ruler of the Northern Ocean was Hu (Quick), and the Ruler of the Centre was Hundun (an undifferentiated and shapeless whole). Shu and Hu were continually meeting in the land of Hundun, who treated them very well. They consulted together how they might repay his kindness, and said, ‘Men all have seven openings for the purpose of seeing, hearing, eating, and breathing, while this (poor) Hundun alone has not one. Let us try and make them for him.’ Accordingly they dug one opening in him every day; and at the end of seven days Hundun died. (Ying Di Wang)
(The Dao) which originated all under the heavens is to be considered as the mother of them all. When the mother is found, we know what her children should be. When one knows that he is his mother’s child, and proceeds to guard (the qualities of) the mother that belong to him, to the end of his life he will be free from all peril. Let him keep his mouth closed, and shut up the portals (of his nostrils), and all his life he will be exempt from laborious exertion. Let him keep his mouth open, and (spend his breath) in the promotion of his affairs, and all his life there will be no safety for him. The perception of what is small is the secret of clear- sightedness; the guarding of what is soft and tender is the secret of strength. Who uses well his light, reverting to its (source so) bright, will from his body ward all blight, and hides the unchanging from men’s sight. (Dao De Jing 52)
Commentary by Bin Song.
Three interpretations are given by the video on the story of Hundun in Zhuangzi.
The first interpretation is about how to preserve the vitality and longevity of human life: in a Daoist perspective, we should not indulge ourselves too much in our sensuous enjoyments; otherwise, we will leak our energy and eventually die away. This interpretation is quite consistent with Chapter 52 of Dao De Jing, which urges to close our mouths and shut up our nostrils so as to avoid dangers and risks involved by indulging life-styles and complicated social engagements. This is also consistent with the Daoist cosmology I explained before, since the stage of Hundun (an undifferentiated and shapeless whole) comes before human civilization, and hence, any life-nourishing practical regime similar to the stage of Hundun will be thought of as being able to preserve one’s vitality.
However, my critique towards this Daoist view of nourishing life is that: just like our nerve system has its sympathetic and parasympathetic components, we must balance both our active and inactive, agitated and quieted sides of human activities. The Daoist regime quite emphasizes the value of quietude and inaction over agitation and action; however, without an equal emphasis upon both sides, our life cannot be consistently nourished. In a Ruist (Confucian) term, I will aver that no matter whether we move or still ourselves during our contemplative practices, as long as we follow the pattern-principle of realities that dynamically harmonize involved beings, our life is always nourished. (My work on the Ruist way of quiet-sitting meditation can be checked here.)
The second interpretation is to critique the Confucian value of reciprocity as a form of social conformity. Such a Daoist critique, just like many other similar Daoist critiques towards the so-called Confucian values, is normally overboard. Reciprocity in the form of imposing one’s preconception of the other is actually also opposed by Confucianism, since Confucius explicitly advocates in the Analects that the harmonization of human relationship is based upon “non-uniformity” (和而不同). So, in order to critique the inappropriate forms of reciprocity and civility, Daoist texts tend to doubt the value of reciprocity and civility all together. This is the reason why I say their critiques towards Confucian values are normally based upon a straw man argument, and thus, overboard.
The third interpretation is to dismiss the rigid identity of human individuals with suspicious mythologies and ideologies. My critique towards it will be similar to my second one: yes, it is unfortunate to identify oneself with inherited mythologies and ideologies without any further self-reflection upon them. However, this does not mean that we ought to repeal the concept of “identity” all together, and just let our life drift, wander and meander in a spontaneous and shapeless way. Rather than merely deconstructing inappropriate ways of self-identification, we should also think about the right, more appropriate ways to construct one’s identity, isn’t it so?
Zhuangzi and Huizi were walking on the bridge over the Hao, when the former said, ‘These thryssas come out, and play about at their ease – that is the enjoyment of fishes.’ The other said, ‘You are not a fish; how do you know what constitutes the enjoyment of fishes?’ Zhuangzi rejoined, ‘You are not I. How do you know that I do not know what constitutes the enjoyment of fishes?’ Huizi said, ‘I am not you; and though indeed I do not fully know you, you certainly are not a fish, and (the argument) is complete against your knowing what constitutes the happiness of fishes.’ Zhuangzi replied, ‘Let us keep to your original question. You said to me, “How do you know what constitutes the enjoyment of fishes?” You knew that I knew it, and yet you put your question to me – well, I know it (from our enjoying ourselves together) over the Hao.’ (Qiu Shui)
Huizi said to Zhuangzi, ‘Can a man indeed be without desires and passions?’ The reply was, ‘He can.’ ‘But on what grounds do you call him a man, who is thus without passions and desires?’ Zhuangzi said, ‘The Dao gives him his personal appearance; Heaven gives him his bodily form; how should we not call him a man?’ Huizi rejoined, ‘Since you call him a man, how can he be without passions and desires?’ The reply was, ‘You are misunderstanding what I mean by passions and desires. What I mean when I say that he is without these is, that this man does not by his likings and dislikings do any inward harm to his body – he always pursues his course out of his own accord, and does not (try to) increase his (store of) life.’ Huizi rejoined, ‘If there were not that increasing of (the amount) of life, how would he preserve his body?’ Zhuangzi said, ‘The Dao gives him his personal appearance; Heaven gives him his bodily form; and he does not by his likings and dislikings do any internal harm to his body. But now you, Sir, spend your spirit as if it were something external to you, and subject your vital powers to toil. You sing (your ditties), leaning against a tree; you go to sleep, grasping the stump of a rotten dry tree. Heaven selected for you the bodily form (of a man), and you babble about the words of hardness and whiteness.’ (De Chong Fu.)
Huizi said to Zhuangzi, ‘I have a large tree, which men call the Ailantus. Its trunk swells out to a large size, but is not fit for a carpenter to apply his line to it; its smaller branches are knotted and crooked, so that the disk and square cannot be used on them. Though planted on the wayside, a builder would not turn his head to look at it. Now your words, Sir, are great, but of no use – all unite in putting themselves away from them.’ Zhuangzi replied, ‘Have you never seen a wildcat or a weasel? There it lies, crouching and low, till the wandering small creatures approaches; east and west it leaps about, avoiding neither what is high nor what is low, till it is caught in a trap, or dies in a net. Again there is the Yak, so large that it is like a cloud hanging in the sky. It is large indeed, but it cannot catch mice. You, Sir, have a large tree and are troubled because it is of no use – why do you not plant it in a tract where there is nothing else, or in a wide and barren wild? There you might saunter idly by its side, or in the enjoyment of untroubled ease sleep beneath it. Neither ratchet nor axe would shorten its existence; there would be nothing to injure it. What is there in its uselessness to cause you distress?‘ (Xiao Yao You)
As Zhuangzi was accompanying a funeral, when passing by the grave of Huizi, he looked round, and said to his attendants, ‘On the top of the nose of that man of Ying there is a (little) bit of mud like a fly’s wing. He sent for the artisan Shi to cut it away. Shi whirled his axe so as to produce a wind, which immediately carried off the mud entirely, leaving the nose uninjured, and the man of Ying standing undisturbed. The ruler Yuan of Song heard of the feat, called the artisan Shi, and said to him, “Try and do the same thing on me.” The artisan said, “Your servant has been able to trim things in that way, but the material on which I have worked has been dead for a long time.” Zhuangzi said, ‘Since the death of the Master, I have had no material to work upon. I have had no one with whom to talk.’ (Xu Wu Gui)
Commentary by Bin Song.
The quoted Passages 1 and 4 are utilized by the video to explain the joy of rambling and seemingly aimless intellectual debate just as the joy of swimming fishes. However, the encounters of Zhuangzi and Huizi are ample in the text of Zhuangzi. If we consider other encounters together with the quoted ones, the message conveyed by the text of Zhuangzi is actually quite consistent.
In the above Passage 2, Zhuangzi disapproves of Huizi, and avers that an obsession with conceptual analysis and philosophical debate on right and wrong is to exhaust the natural life given by heaven. Therefore, in order to continue the naturally happy life of human beings, Zhuangzi thinks we should give up such analytic thinking all together.
The same message is delivered by Passage 3, where Huizi insists upon the definition of “greatness” and “usefulness” of things according to how they fits for varying human needs. However, Zhuangzi thinks this way of thinking about usefulness is just relative to, and thus, limited by social conventions. If we are free from such conventions, we can genuinely find the greatest use of a seemingly useless tree, niv., that of “there is nothing to injure it” and hence, keeping the tree’s natural longevity.
Therefore, in light of the passages 2 and 3, the debate about “happiness of fishes” between Zhuangzi and Huizi is actually to highlight, from the perspective of Zhuangzi, the limitedness of the analytical approach of Huizi’s thought. What Zhuangzi means is that analytical rigor, such as the one that features Huizi’s thought, cannot grasp the wholeness of the Dao, and hence, cannot let humans affectively being united with it. Instead, only if we give up our analytic thought, stop debating about right or wrong, and furthermore, aimlessly wander without being constrained by social conventions, we can achieve the ideal Daoist state of joy and the good life.
Seen from this perspective, the so-called intellectual friendship eulogized in Passage 4 is more about expressing Zhuangzi’s own feeling towards the ample intellectual exchanges between him and Huizi. Huizi tries to construct theories or discourses to argue positively about some endpoint. However, each of such constructions will be addressed by Zhuangzi for the purpose of deconstruction, and, hence, for disclosing the unique Daoist way of life of “sauntering idly by the side of a useless tree.” However, whether Huizi understands intellectual activities also as such would remain a question, and whether Zhuangzi’s such understanding can remain accommodating to Huizi is also worth asking.
Hence, my comment towards such a thought of Zhuangzi will be consistent with my previous one: I admit that union with nature, such as the contemplation over swimming fishes, is a great source of joy. However, if the joy is beyond human language to express, it is definitely not contrary to human endeavors which take such a try. In other words, the non-rationality of the mystical feeling or intuition towards the union with Dao is not contrary to rationality. In a certain way of life, it can even include the pursuit of rationality. That’s when human language is taken as a fallible, perfectible, yet indispensable tool to describe and integrate every piece of life experience into a growing and harmonizing whole.
Also, I have to remind that continual deconstruction is itself a claim to make, a stance to hold, and hence, a potential orthodox to defend. Therefore, when Zhuangzi advocates such a continually deconstructive, Daoist way of life, it is still a way of life, which has been argued and debated by Zhuangzi in the way of apparently non-debate, and non-argument. Understood as such, the wandering joy of intellectual activities beside a useless tree is factually based upon a specific understanding of what intellectual activities are, and in light of the above discussion, I doubt whether Zhuangzi ever thinks of alternative ways of understanding intellectual activities. In other words, if Zhuangzi knows the joy of fishes from his guts, does Zhuangzi really knows the joy of Huizi?
In this post, I will make use of Prof. Hans-Georg Moeller’s animation of key stories in the Zhuangzi, and their corresponding original texts, to make some commentaries of this extremely popular (at least in the West) Daoist thinker’s thought.
Zhuangzi’s Owls and Crows Crave Mice, script by Hans-Georg Moeller
Texts and Translations: (From ctext.org, translations have been adapted by me).
Nie Que asked Wang Ni, saying, ‘Do you know, Sir, what all creatures agree in approving and affirming?’ ‘How should I know it?’ was the reply. ‘Do you know what it is that you do not know?’ asked the other again, and he got the same reply. He asked a third time, ‘Then there is no way to know anything?’ and Wang Ni answered as before, (adding however), ‘Notwithstanding, I will try and explain my meaning. How do you know that when I say “I know it,” I really (am showing that) I do not know it, and that when I say “I do not know it,” I really am showing that I do know it.’ And let me ask you some questions: ‘If a man sleep in a damp place, he will have a pain in his loins, and half his body will be as if it were dead; but will it be so with an eel? If he be living in a tree, he will be frightened and all in a tremble; but will it be so with a monkey? And does any one of the three know his right place ? Men eat animals that have been fed on grain and grass; deer feed on the thick-set grass; centipedes enjoy small snakes; owls and crows delight in mice; but does any one of the four know the right taste? The dog-headed monkey finds its mate in the female gibbon; the elk and the axis deer cohabit; and the eel enjoys itself with other fishes. Mao Qiang and Li Ji were accounted by men to be most beautiful, but when fishes saw them, they dived deep in the water from them; when birds, they flew from them aloft; and when deer saw them, they separated and fled away. But did any of these four know which in the world is the right female attraction? As I look at the matter, the first principles of humaneness and righteousness and the paths of approval and disapproval are inextricably mixed and confused together – how is it possible that I should know how to discriminate among them?’ Nie Que said (further), ‘Since you, Sir, do not know what is advantageous and what is hurtful, is the Perfect man also in the same way without the knowledge of them?’ Wang Ni replied, ‘The Perfect man is spirit-like. Great lakes might be boiling about him, and he would not feel their heat; the He and the Han rivers might be frozen up, and he would not feel the cold; the hurrying thunderbolts might split the mountains, and the wind shake the ocean, without being able to make him afraid. Being such, he mounts on the clouds of the air, rides on the sun and moon, and rambles at ease beyond the four seas. Neither death nor life makes any change in him, and how much less should the considerations of advantage and injury do so!’
Commentary by Bin Song:
Aristotle in the Politics argues that relying upon languages and discourses to debate ethical matters in a polis is what distinguishes humans from non-human beings, and hence, Aristotle defines humans as “a political animal.” Similarly, Confucius in the Analects (the chapter of Wei Zi) refuses to live among birds and beasts as a detached hermit because Confucius thinks “being social” so as to help better the living conditions of human fellows in society is what “being a human” or “being humane” means essentially.
However, Zhuangzi holds a different view: everyone’s view of “humaneness” and “righteousness” is relative to their own perspective, and hence, being dedicated to moral debate is like arguing which one among men, deers, centipedes, owls and crows “know the right taste.” It can only bring “mixture and confusion,” and hence, Zhuangzi would never do that. Instead, what Zhuangzi longs for is to become a Perfect man who leaves every being alone while himself enjoying the utter freedom from debate, controversy and other complicated human artifices.
Quite obviously, the doubt towards the distinction between humans and the non-human nature is quite consistent in Laozi and Zhuangzi. Because of this, the text of Zhuangzi has its good reasons to be categorized as belonging to the same Daoist lineage in classical Chinese thought.
My questions: is there really no way to reach a consensus among all human beings about what is morally right or wrong? If this is the case, how can we have a United Nations and how can we have a Universal Declaration of Human Rights? Preaching moral dogmatics is mostly repulsive in modern context; however, does this mean that there are no morals at all? Even if reaching such a consensus may be indeed very hard, does the difficulty mean that we would give up the efforts once for all? Isn’t a case we can make that we humans can at least temporarily and pragmatically reach a certain consensus about what should be done in a specific context, while keeping it in mind that we can always change and refine the consensus when situations more evolve?
When claiming every moral judgment is relative to one’s perspective, isn’t Zhuangzi also making a non-relativist moral claim, viz., an absolutist one that every one is entitled to their own moral judgment?
Regarding the point made by the video, I question whether the withdrawal from debating and advocating a certain kind of morals is really therapeutic. When one is chronically abused in their family, when one young girl is sexually molested, or when one veteran suffers from traumas out of a war, does the sheer refusal to talk about morals really heal their wounds?
Audio: Diverse Religious Experience, by Dr. Bin Song.
Video: Diverse Religious Experience, by Dr. Bin Song.
(1936 words. )
Hallo, this is Dr. Bin Song at Washington College for the course of “Introduction to Comparative Religion: Eastern.”
As the course comes to its conclusion, let’s talk about comparison of religions. However, since the comparative study of religions from the inter-disciplinary angles of philosophy, religious studies, and theology is what my scholarly career has been dedicated to, it is hard to give a short video-lecture on such a rich topic.
In this regard, I will follow my writer-instinct that if nothing else you can talk about, or if there is too much you can talk about, be phenomenological. In other words, I’ll just describe my religious experiences.
Per the categories so nicely laid out in the assigned chapter of “how to think globally and affiliate locally” by Dr. Jeannine Diller, I am a differentialist pluralist regarding salvific religious experience, but an identist open inclusivist regarding the knowledge of ultimate reality. This means that I believe there are multiple types of religious experience, each of which fulfills distinctive paths to “salvation,” in whatever sense “salvation” can be understood by varying traditions. For instance, in the Christian tradition, prayer to God is a theistic religious experience leading to the salvation from sins. In the Buddhist tradition, meditation is an acosmic calming-down religious experience leading to nirvana, viz., salvation from human suffering. In the Ru (Confucian) tradition, performing ritualistic arts such as the one of Taiji Martial Art is a anthropo-cosmic religious experience leading to a continual harmonization of involved beings in evolving situations of life, viz., a salvation from chaos and imbalance in one’s individual and social life.
However, regarding the knowledge of the so-called ultimate reality, I am an identist. I believe ultimate reality is one, and different traditions have varying perceptions and conceptions of it. However, since my way of life is rooted in the ancient Ruism (Confucianism), I take Ruism as the base for me to learn about ultimate reality, the so-called Tian. Even so, I do not believe the long history of Ruist spirituality has exhausted all possibilities of the knowledge of such an ultimate reality, and hence, I am also eager to learn from other traditions so as to incorporate these outside insights into the Ru tradition. During the process, I hold on to no dogma nor incorrigible creed; instead, I am ready to change my pre-established conceptions whenever needed, and hence, grow my rooted Ruist way of life in an open-ended, yet continual and organic way. I call this type of interreligious studies as a rooted and open inclucivism.
Since I am experientially, salvifically pluralistic, but ontologically processual and inclusivist, I also see varying types of religious experiences lead to different modes of salvation, but these modes of salvation all engage humans with varying aspects of the same ultimate reality.
Good, let me give some brief accounts of three types of religious experience I have gone through: the theistic one, the acosmic one of pure awareness, and the anthropo-cosmic one.
Around the summer of 2004, I watched the movie Pulp Fiction, and was quite obsessed with one of its last scenes which is full of religious meanings. In that scene, one killer acted by Samuel L. Jackson miraculously avoided all bullets fired by his opponent from an incredibly close distance. Before this event, whenever the killer was about to kill someone, he would recite biblical verses, yet with no obvious understanding nor devotional feeling attached to these verses. However, after this miracle happened, the killer believed that this is a revelation, and he accordingly turned into a very pious Christian. In compassion, his killing partner, who is acted by John Travolta, experienced the same miracle, but because he has no habit of pointlessly reciting biblical verses, he didn’t see that as a miracle. In the movie, the partner was eventually killed, but the new Christian convert gave up his criminal vocation, and continued to live a pious life.
After watching the movie, I was so intrigued by its religious meaning to start regularly and intensively reading the Christian bible. During one night, when I played poker with my friends and was in a desperate situation, I shouted almost fanatically “God, please give me a black ace of spades” without really believing it could ever come true. However, I did draw a black ace of spades after I fanatically prayed my wishes. Honestly, because of the influence of the movie and my reading of the Christian bible during that time, I had a great feeling of awe in front of an almighty supreme being at that particular poker moment. I was stunned. Many years later, when I read Rudolf Otto (1869-1937) described his religious experience of God as a feeling of “mystery of terror and awe” towards the “absolute other,” I knew exactly what he is talking about.
Be theistic as such an experience may, my acosmic experience of pure awareness derives from my consistent practice of breathing meditation.
In one night early this year of 2021, around 1:00 am, I woke up with my eyes open but my eyelids closed. At the first few minutes, I could not understand where I was. Since my eyelids were closed, I could only see some shapeless dark or crimson colors before my eyes, like facing the quiet and vast universe. My breathing was completely suspended; I felt no need to either inhale or exhale whatsoever. And this suspense of breathing lasted for quite a while before I felt the need to inhale a little bit and exhale slightly and accordingly. I could not feel the existence of my body either; one leg seemed to bend, while another one seems to cross over it; but overall, there was no obvious feeling of my hand, arm or other parts of the body. And I felt a complete ease, comfort, transparency and an endurable sense of peaceful joy. It was as if nothing exists in the world except your super translucent eyesight! However, when I opened my eyelids and got to understand I was actually sleeping on the original bed and waking up, I immediately realized that the psychosomatic state where I was at those moments was exactly the same as when I entered into a deeper state triggered by my normal practice of breathing meditation. Such a deeper state is normally featured by slow, delicate, and even suspended breathing; and I regularly do this practice after my lunch and during an afternoon nap. During this sort of meditative nap, I barely fall asleep, but can feel that when the ideal states of breathing happen, my eyes can open while my eyelids closed. Accompanying this unusual movement of my eyes, I can also enjoy a feeling of ease, comfort, transparency and being endurably reenergized for quite a while. This is also normally how I re-boost myself for my afternoon work.
However, on that night, for the first time in my life, the practice of breathing meditation went on by itself while I was asleep; when the spontaneous practice reached its ideal state, it woke me up with my eyes open but eyelids closed! What happened afterwards was that while lying on bed, I changed my sides and postures for several times. Nevertheless, however I positioned myself on the bed, the deep, slow, and delicate breathing just continued by itself. It constantly reenergized me, and put my state of consciousness in such a more and more mindful state that eventually, I got up around 2:00 am and started to write a paper, reply to emails, and do my other daily routines as a scholar. I did another nap in the breakfast time, and after that, I didn’t feel any fatigue or stress during the day because of the seemingly undercut sleep.
I call this religious experience as an acosmic one of pure awareness because of the complete disappearance of the split between me as a subject and the world as an object. Because of it, when I read how Patanjali talks about the non-dual “pure awareness” as underlying all concrete patterns of consciousness in the Yoga Sutra, I know intimately what he is talking about.
Lastly, I will give an even briefer account of my anthropo-cosmic experience of Oneness because of my intensive study of Ruism at the Daofeng Institute of Sino-Christian Studies in Hong Kong in the spring of 2011. That institute dwells in a very beautiful mountain, and its building are a mixture of ancient Chinese and Lutheran Christian styles. I was arranged into a room in a scholarly dormitory which shares the same common area with other scholars. from the window of it, I can feel the flourishing trees, flowers and hear bird chirping and tourists walking by. In that room, I used three months to decipher one singular verse in Confucius’ Analects. When talking about the goal of one’s good life one can ever dream about, Confucius was recorded as particularly approving of the following view:
“In the last month of Spring, once the Spring garments have been completed, I should like to assemble a company of five or six young people and six or seven kids to go bathe in the Yi River and enjoy the breeze upon the Rain Dance Altar, and then return singing to our residence. ” (Analects 11:26)
As mentioned, this quote is embedded in a long conversation between Confucius and his students on what is the desirable type of good human life. The experience depicted by the verse itself is anthropo-cosmic since the exuberating joy felt by the companions of human fellowship, including the young and old, co-vibrates with the life-generating season of spring in the cosmos. In order to re-liven the depicted experience, I tried to integrate everything I can do in that beautiful mountain during the three months into one holistic experience: I meditated every day and almost everywhere. I read, I wrote, I talked with other scholars, and I also hiked together and played sports together with them. We even cooked together so as to have dinners of a banquet style. During the process, friends played guitar, we sang songs, and sometimes, we also organized serious conferences, and exchange intellectual ideas. I wrote lots of poems in the three months, and when things cooled down a bit, the three months also turned out to be the most productive ones in my career of scholarly writing.
I see a significant portion of the three months in that mountain as reviving the anthropo-cosmic religious experience approved by Confucius. This type of religious experience may not be that submissive, or ecstatic as the Christian and Hindu ones; however, its enduring, constantly energizing, and colorful nature definitely leaves an indelible mark on my life.
So, the final problem may be: since religious experiences are thus abundant and diverse, how do we deal with them? In the Ruist metaphysics, the ultimate reality of Tian has its mystical and ineffable dimension, which connects me to the “absolute other” nature of the theistic experience. Also, the all-pervading cosmic vital-energy was thought of by Ruist masters such as Zhang Zai (1020-1077) as best manifested by the purified state of human heartmind, a trope immediately relatable to Patanjali’s term of “Pure Awareness.” However, what remains the most important for such an incorporation of non-Ruist religious experiences to its own is that I expect that such a process of incorporating and harmonizing will never end. Life continues, civilization endures, and the entire cosmos is evolving. So, with such a felt cosmic and human energy of constant creativity, I believe our comparative study and practice of religions would never end either.
Audio: Laozi and Kongzi on Cosmology, by Dr. Bin Song.
Video: Laozi and Kongzi on Cosmology, by Dr. Bin Song.
(2200 words)
Hallo, this is Dr. Bin Song at Washington College for the course of “Introduction to Comparative Religion: Eastern.”
After giving a brief introduction to Daoism, let’s read its foundational text, the famous Dao De Jing (the Classic of Way and Virtue) written by Laozi.
For scholars, given all the historical evidences we can gather, it is hard to proclaim with the same degree of certainty as the case of Kongzi (Confucius) that Laozi is indeed a real historical figure, and he single-authored a foundational text of Chinese religion called Dao De Jing. An earliest, popular version of the story of Laozi and Kongzi was told by Si Maqian’s “Record of Grand Historian” written in around 90s B.C.E, when it had been already hundreds of years later than the estimated actual time of Laozi’s and Kongzi’s lives. According to this story, Laozi was a grand archivist in late Zhou Dynasty, and Kongzi, since being a dedicated learner of Zhou rituals, went to the capital of Zhou to learn with Laozi on rituals. However, Laozi dismissed Kongzi’s interest in rituals, and thought focusing upon the learning of rituals is a misguided path to the cosmic Way, the Dao. After the meeting, on the side of Kongzi, according to the story, Kongzi praised Laozi and thought Laozi’s thought is mysterious and admirable. However, on the side of Laozi, he was so disillusioned by the social and political realities of his time, and decided to ride on a cow towards the western border of Zhou Dynasty so as to flee as a hermit. However, before being about to depart from the border, a gatekeeper convinced Laozi to leave some words for later generations, and this became the ultimate occasion for Laozi to write down his thought in five thousand words, which become the received text of Dao De Jing.
Both Ruists and Daoists, viz., the respective followers of Kongzi and Laozi, have interest to promote the told story. For Ruists, it indicates the virtues of intellectual humbleness and independence of Kongzi, since Kongzi constantly learned from varying teachers and eventually came up with his own systematic thought. For Daoists, the story was frequently told to prove the superiority of Laozi’s thought upon Kongzi’s, and hence, spoke very well for the dissenting nature of Daoist thought we analyzed in our previous unit.
Not only the story itself was worth doubting regarding its historical authenticity; according to the best knowledge we have today, whether the 5000-word text of Dao De Jing is a single-authored book which was written earlier than the major texts in the Ru school such as the Analects is also highly controversial. As stated above, Daoists may have an interest to believe that Dao De Jing was much earlier than the Analects, but there are varying versions of the text which were recently excavated by archeologists, and these versions are sometimes quite different from each other and dated in varying periods of time. Therefore, it is basically safe for today’s scholars to conclude that the received Dao De Jing is a stabilized version which results from a time-consuming process of compositions and compilation, which may start from the 5th until 3rd century B.C.E. More importantly, if you read the entire body of the varying versions of Dao De Jing, the dissenting nature of Daoist thought from the Ru thought is obvious. Because a dissenting philosophy must come after the one which it dissents against, we have reasons to aver that at least a significant portion of Dao De Jing (DDJ) was written after the flourishing of Kongzi’s school, and its sedimented nature of compilation also derives from the fact that the debate between the two schools was continual in a long period of time.
As briefly discussed in last unit, if we treat Laozi and Kongzi as the representative, somewhat symbolic figures of the schools of thought they helped to initiate, Daoists and Ruists have very different reactions to the social chaos created by the disintegration of Zhou Dynasty: one we summarized as being short on civilization, while another as being long on civilization. Actually, to compare two thinkers, no better means can be furnished than juxtaposing the best society they are dreaming for during one worst time of human history.
This is what Laozi dreams for:
“Let the state be small and the people few. Even if there be techniques replacing tens of hundreds’ of people’s labor, they would not be used. Let the people look upon death as a grievous thing and renounce traveling afar. Though there be boats and carriages, yet nobody rides in them. Though there be armors and weapons, yet nobody takes them out. Let people go back to the old days when knots in ropes were still used. People relish their food, like their dresses, find ease in their homes, and are happy with their customs and ways of life. People in neighboring settlements behold one another from afar. They can hear the barking of dogs and the crowing of cocks from the neighborhood. Yet they age to death without meeting or communicating with each other.” (DDJ, version of Wang Bi’s, chapter 80, my own translation)
Instead, This is what Kongzi dreams for:
“When the Great Way is followed intentionally, all under Heaven is distributed appropriately. People with virtues and merits are selected for public office, trust is cherished, and courtesy is cultivated. The people not only love their own parents and children, they properly love other people’s parents and children as well. The elderly are attended until death; adults are employed; children are raised. Concerning widowers, widows, orphans, the aged with no children, the disabled, and the ailing: they are all nourished. Males and females are bonded in marriage; their talents and jobs are matched. It is detestable for possessions and resources to be thrown away upon the ground. However, when gathering them, people would not store them solely for selfish use. It is detestable that people refrain from using their strength to fulfill their duties. However, when people do use their strength, it is not solely for personal gain. Therefore, intrigues and deceptions can gain no foothold. There are neither robbers nor thieves; neither is there any mob nor rebellious bandits. The doors of households appear to be closed, but they are never locked. This is a society of great harmony.” (The Classic of Ritual, the Chapter of Liyun, my own translation.)
So, in a nutshell, Laozi dreamed for a minimalist human society where life is simple, people are few, technology is disregarded, sociality is undesirable, and in a word, humans barely depart from nature. Instead, the idyllic picture depicted by Kongzi is one of all-encompassing social harmony by which fruits of civilization are continually generated and fairly distributed, while every human being is willing to keep their robust moral compass, and hence, can co-thrive based upon the most ideal measure of governance and social co-ordination.
This juxtaposition of social dreams will become more interesting if we furthermore explore how these dreams are argued and legitimized in a cosmological scale. Normally, popular readers of ancient Chinese thought think cosmology is unique to Daoism, while Ruism just focuses upon ethics and politics. Unfortunately, this is one entrenched misconception which we need to dismantle. As discussed in last unit, there is a continual process of debate, critique, and mutual influence on virtually all topics of philosophy and religion between the named two schools of thought in the period of Warring States, which means if a Daoist text uses a cosmology to refute, or doubt the social activism advocated by the Ru school, Ruists would very probably come up with their own cosmology to contrast and counterbalance. In the following, I will illustrate how this happens using two texts which are respected by each of the named traditions as its own cosmological foundation: one is still Dao De Jing (DDJ), and another is called the Great Commentary (or the Appended Texts) of the Classic of Change (GC). For the purpose of comparison, I will still call the views in Dao De Jing as belonging to Laozi and the latter as to Kongzi.
Regarding how humans should comport themselves in face of society and nature, Laozi says: “humans follow the earth, the earth follows the heaven, the heaven follows the Dao, while the Dao proceeds out of its own.” (DDJ, chapter 25). However, Kongzi says: “Without humans, the Dao would not proceed automatically in the human world.” (GC, part II, chapter 8). Obviously, these two thinkers have a very different view towards how the Dao functions in human society.
Then, my question is: how the Dao proceeds in general in the cosmological scale? Why does Laozi think humans just need to imitate the cosmic Dao while Kongzi thinks humans need to manifest the cosmic Dao in a specifically human way?
There is a sequence of the cosmic creation of the Dao argued by Laozi. He says: “Out of Dao, One is generated. Out of One, Two is generated. Out of Two, Three is generated. Out of Three, the myriad things are generated.” (DDj, Chapter 42). According to my best knowledge, the sequence can be illustrated as the following chart:
“Non-being” (Dao) ➡ One (the undifferentiated whole of “being,”) ➡ Two (Yin/Yang vital-energy; Heaven and Earth) ➡ Three (Heaven, Earth, and Human Beings) ➡ the myriad things.
Chart I: Laozi’s Cosmology
The most important feature of this cosmological sequence are that 1) this is a temporally unfolding process which indicates how the Dao generates everything in the universe from the earliest stage of a gigantic vacuum of non-being, to an undifferentiated whole of being, via the differentiation and interaction of yin/yang vital energy, and then, comes up with a myriad concrete things. 2) Laozi cherishes the idea of “temporal priority” in this cosmological sequence such that one temporally earlier stage is always thought of as being more powerful and ideal than a later one, since the earlier one generates the later and thus, better manifests the power of the Dao. 3) Laozi actually thinks the cosmological sequence is cyclical, so that when any being, including plants, animals, and human society, comes to its mature shape, they will start to decay, degenerate, and hence, come back to the Dao, and then, the cosmic process will be regenerated again.
Given Laozi’s cosmology, it will be easy for us to understand why he dreams the minimalist human society where human conditions barely depart from nature: this is because the earlier stage of the cosmic generation where a human can be, the more powerful, ideal, and in a word, closer to the Dao we can become.
Now, let’s see how Kongzi envisions the cosmic generation of the Dao. He says in the Great Commentary that: “Thus, there is Ultimate Limit in the Change. Ultimate Limit creates two modes. Two modes create four images. Four images create eight trigrams. The eight trigrams define good and ill fortune. Good and ill fortune give rise to the great enterprise.” (GC, part I, chapter 11). Here, Ultimate Limit was the signifier to the Cosmic Dao which creates the entire universe in an ontologically layered process, and the process can be illustrated as follows:
Ultimate Limit (Dao) ⬇ … ➡ Two Modes (Yin/Yang Vital-Energies, or Heaven and Earth) ➡ … ⬇ … ➡ Four Images (Four Seasons) ➡ … ⬇ … ➡ Eight Trigrams (Thunder, Lightning, Wind, Rain, Sun, Moon, etc.) ➡ … ⬇ … ➡ Human Beings and a Myriad of things ➡ …
Chart II: Kongzi’s Cosmology
Here, what matters is not to seek any historical, temporal origin of the cosmos. Rather, Kongzi thinks that regardless of the origin of the universe, human beings just need to understand their conditions of living in the endlessly changing cosmos here and now, and hence, try their best to fulfill their potentiality of being a human so as to manifest the cosmic Dao in a uniquely human, and thus, humane way. Understood as such, the vertical arrows illustrated in the chart explain the varying layers of patterns and principles that regulate cosmic changes. Human life, on the one hand, is conditioned by these patterns and principles so that humans need to organize a society and civilization within the non-human nature. However, on the other hand, since these patterns and principles are just conditions, rather than cosmic causes, humans can still adapt to , or utilize them for creating new ways to manifest the cosmic Dao in a uniquely human way, viz., the way of humaneness and harmony as indicated by his social dream.
Yes, that’s it. This is how we read the Dao De Jing from the original historical context it arises and evolves. This cosmological and comparative angle I bring here is just one among many we can read the text, which succumbs to your judgment of its soundness, and surely the contrasting views of the two schools can be compatible with each other. But in order to furnish a compatible interpretation, we must know each of them in their own terms at first. When you delve into the text, you’ll find many other themes such as statecraft, meditation, military strategy, aesthetics, etc., which are no less riveting and worth of pondering. Since Dao De Jing is frequently touted as the second most translated book in the world, I guess, we should at least find one time in our life to read it. And I hope our course is just this time.
Bin Song 