For example, to argue that there is a qualitatively different wuwei way of stealing or gambling would not be meaningful in the world of the Laozi , because such action would not arise in the ideal realm of naturalness. To elaborate further, consider the ideal ethical situation in the cosmological reading of the Laozi as represented by the Heshanggong commentary. The dispensation of qi gives rise to a pristine hierarchical order in which those who are blessed with a perfect qi endowment, the rare sages, would govern the majority.
It can be assumed that the sages are naturally predisposed to quietude, whereas the common people are driven by desire in varying degree. Indeed, at one point, the Laozi seems to distinguish three different grades of human beings ch. The role of the sage-ruler, then, would be to guide the people to abide by simplicity through personal charisma and example, and also by means of policies designed to cultivate an environment in which desire would not run rampant.
In the absence of a true sage-ruler, the Laozi is saying, according to this interpretation, those in power should emulate the Daoist sage, cultivate their internal qi energies, and bring about peace and harmony through naturalness and nonaction.
The decisive difference is that on this account, human beings all share the same essential nature, as distinguished from their qi -constituted capacities. For example, some people may be better endowed and therefore could live to a ripe old age, while others with a poorer endowment may die prematurely; but this does not detract from the fundamental assertion that they share the same inherent de , which defines their nature.
Sages are not a different kind of being, god-like, with a radically different nature; rather, they are individuals who manage to realize their authentic de to the full. Being one with Dao does not describe any mystical union with a divine source or sacred power, but reflects a mode of being that accords with the assumed original nature marked by natural goodness and the absence of excessive desire. Regardless of the position one takes, in this general interpretive framework a number of symbols which both delight and puzzle readers of the Laozi can be highlighted.
Suggestive of its creativity and nurturance, Dao is likened to a mother e. This complements the paradigm of the feminine e. The infant e. First, it brings out the relationship between Dao and world; second, the kind of innocence and wholesome spontaneity represented by the infant exemplifies the pristine fullness of de in the ideal Daoist world. Natural symbols such as water e. The low-lying and fertile valley e. Carefully crafted and ornately decorated objects are treasured by the world, and as such can be used as a powerful symbol for it.
In contrast, the utterly simple, unaffected, and seemingly valueless pu , a plain uncarved block of wood, brings into sharp relief the integrity of Daoist virtue and of the person who embodies it e. Finally, one may mention the notion of reversal e. With respect to the latter, it is true that in many chapters the text seems to be addressing the ruler or the ruling elite, explaining to them the ideal government of the Daoist sage.
This is not surprising given the Zhou context and given that the production of written documents and the access to them were generally the preserve of the ruling class in ancient China. However, this need not restrict interpretation to politics in the narrow sense of statecraft or political strategies.
In the light of the emphasis on ziran and wuwei , there is sufficient evidence that the Laozi views politics in a larger ethical-spiritual context, in which the flourishing of sociopolitical order is rooted in self-cultivation.
In the final analysis, naturalness and nonaction are seen to reflect the function of the nameless and formless Dao. As such, Daoist ethical ideals are anchored in a non-empirical, idealized view of nature. Specifically, the ethics of the Laozi rests on the understanding that de is inherent in nature, or better, the Daoist world.
The understanding of de , however, is dependent on that of Dao, which in turn hinges on the interpretation of wu as either original substance or nonbeing. Both readings are plausible and are within the semantic range of the Laozi. Whereas the former subscribes to the prevalent qi theory that underlies much of Chinese philosophy and on that basis provides an integrated view of the cosmos, self-cultivation and government, the latter focuses on the fundamental unity of being characterized by natural simplicity and quietude that ideally should define the ethical course for both the individual and society.
The Laozi should be recognized as a seminal work. It is profoundly insightful; but it is the task of the interpreter to work out the full implications of its often provocative insight. It seems reasonable to assume that while the Laozi has something new to offer, it nonetheless shares certain background ideas and assumptions with other early Chinese philosophical texts. As such, the cosmological interpretation should be given due consideration.
However, in bringing into view the nothingness of Dao and the order of ziran , the Laozi invites reflection on the very core of being beyond any cosmological assumptions.
While the production of meaning is context dependent, new horizons do emerge from great works of philosophy. The two lines of interpretation outlined here have different ethical implications regarding the nature of the ideal sage, but neither can be said to have transgressed the hermeneutic boundaries of the Daodejing.
The suggestion that they both arise from the Laozi is not a matter of equivocation but an acknowledgement of its hermeneutical depth for a good set of essays incorporating the latest scholarship on the Laozi , see Liu The power of the Daodejing does not lie in a clearly laid out set of doctrines, but in its seminal insights. The concept of qi may be culture specific, and the prospects of realizing universal Daoist order may seem remote, but the recognition of the fundamental problem of desire should still give us pause.
The ills of discrimination, exploitation and intellectual hubris, so deeply embedded in language and value systems, remain as serious today as they were in early China. The healing power of nonaction still strikes a chord and commands continuing reflection and engagement. Although in working out these insights differences will no doubt arise, they unite all interpreters of the Laozi and draw new generations of readers into the mystery of Dao and its virtue. Transliteration of Chinese terms in this article follows the hanyu pinyin romanization system, except for a few proper names and quotations.
Brill, ], pp. The Laozi Story 2. Date and Authorship of the Laozi 3. Textual Traditions 4. Commentaries 5. Approaches to the Laozi 6. Dao and Virtue 7. Date and Authorship of the Laozi The date of composition refers to the time when the Laozi reached more or less its final form; it does not rule out later interpolations or corruptions.
Textual Traditions The discovery of two Laozi silk manuscripts at Mawangdui, near Changsha, Hunan province in marks an important milestone in modern Laozi research. Commentaries Commentaries to the Laozi offer an invaluable guide to interpretation and are important also for their own contributions to Chinese philosophy and religion.
Approaches to the Laozi Is the Laozi a manual of self-cultivation and government? Dao and Virtue To begin with Dao, the etymology of the Chinese graph or character suggests a pathway, or heading in a certain direction along a path. Bibliography Allan, Sarah, Allan, Sarah, and Crispin Williams, Ames, Roger T.
Hall trans. Assandri, Friederike, Baxter, William H. Bokenkamp, Stephen, Boltz, William G. Brooks, E. Bruce, and A. Taeko Brooks, Capra, Fritjof, Chan, Alan K. Brill, 1— Chan, Wing-tsit, Chen, Ellen M. Ching, Julia, Clarke, J.
Creel, Herlee G. What is Taoism? Csikszentmihalyi, Mark, and Philip J. Ivanhoe eds. Ding Sixin, Guodian Chumu zhujian sixiang yanjiu , Beijing: Dongfang chubanshe. Emerson, John, Erkes, Eduard, Fung Yu-lan, Gao Heng, []. Chongding Laozi zhenggu , Taipei: Xinwenfeng; original publication date Girardot, Norman J. Graham, A. Reprinted in A. Guodian Chu mu zhujian , Hall, David, and Roger Ames, Hansen, Chad, Han, Wei ed. Hardy, Julia, Hawkes, David trans. Henricks, Robert G.
Hoff, Benjamin, Ikeda, Tomohisa, Chan and Sor-hoon Tan eds. Ivanhoe, Philip J. The Daodejing of Laozi , Indianapolis: Hackett. Jaspers, Karl, Jiang Xichang, Laozi jiaogu , Taipei: Dongsheng. Kaltenmark, Max, Kim, Hongkyung, Kimura Eiichi, Kohn, Livia, Daoism Handbook , Leiden and Boston: Brill.
Kohn, Livia, and Michael LaFargue eds. Kusuyama Haruki, LaFargue, Michael, Lai, Karyn, Lau, D. Legge, James, []. Lin, Paul J. Liu Cunren, Liu, Xiaogan, Laozi , Taipei: Dongda; second, revised edition, Laozi gujin , 2 vols.
Loewe, Michael, and Edward L. Shaughnessy eds. Lou, Yulie, Wang Bi ji jiaoshi , Beijing: Zhonghua shuju. Lynn, Richard John trans. Ma Chengyuan ed. Ma Xulun, Laozi jiaogu , Hong Kong: Taiping shuju. Mair, Victor, Moeller, Hans-Georg, Mukai Tetsuo, Needham, Joseph, Tyson Brown, National Geographic Society. National Geographic Society. Gina Borgia, National Geographic Society.
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Ancient China is responsible for a rich culture, still evident in modern China. From small farming communities rose dynasties such as the Zhou B. E , Qin B. E , and Ming C. Each had its own contribution to the region. Mature Daoist analysis centers on the insight that while human dao s are normative, neither the natural nor the actual dao are.
Given the shared ru-mo Confucian-Mohist assumption that normative authority for their competing first-order dao s comes from some form of endorsement by tian nature:sky , Daoists aver that nature does not authorize or endorse any particular social dao.
This claim has two versions: pluralist and primitivist. Denying that it endorses a particular one is compatible with its allowing either many or none. The nihilistic answer might take the form of an assertion that reality is an amorphous chaos and all dao s impose an illusory or unreal social structure on Chaos. This version, however, has no obvious normative implications. The philosophical quietism is also motivational and intentional quietism—essentially an extreme form of stoicism.
The appearance of fatalism comes from concluding that we have no moral responsibility—to enact the Great dao in our actions. The Zhuangzi strain, informed by contact with Chinese philosophy of language, recognized that a blanket anti-language position was self-censuring.
The instruction not to follow any dao is itself a dao and thus enjoins against following itself—a prescriptive paradox. The pluralist reading is that all de facto rival practices are natural dao s in virtue of their being actual practices. Human dao s in general are a part of natural dao. Both pluralist and primitivist Daoism would reject the Confucian-Mohist conclusion that political authority should be used to bring about a harmony of dao s—making everyone follow a single dao.
The social world survives as well or better when people follow different ways of life. Focus on either tian nature:sky dao or Great dao helps to undermine the sense that it is imperative to master or impose any particular first-order dao. Tian nature dao , like great dao justifies no particular judgment whatever.
The primitivist version of Daoism, however, can religiously take a more assertive form that nature does endorse a particular normative dao , albeit not a human one particularly one in discourse form. There is a single, constant, correct way of life that cannot be expressed or presented in practices, rules, narratives, maps, examples, songs or any other human or social form of communication and advocacy.
It implicitly must be a super-human dao accessed via super-human epistemic capacities—mystical or esoteric dao. Though it is usually expressed as the natural dao , there is no obvious reason why there might not be multiple super-human dao s. A different version of the primitivist interpretive line is that there are fully natural ways but that they require finer or more complex discriminations than normal humans are capable of.
Humans could follow them, as it were, by luck or accident, but not reliably via any learnable pattern. If one subtracts the claims to superhuman epistemic capacities, then an interpretive hypothesis would yield a combination of both natural realism and skepticism. Still another possibility would be of naturalistic ways to do something that are humanly accessible—but in different ways to each different human or in each situation.
The political consequence is still a government guided by a discourse dao —the systematic reversal of the dominant Confucian dao. Relativist pluralist or skeptical versions need not deny that there are norms for endorsing some dao s over others, but would acknowledge that the norms of endorsing a dao constitute a distinct dao that we presuppose in choosing it.
However, actual nature gives us many candidate dao s. Any of the options actually available to us for guidance are components of both the natural and Great dao s. The naturalist, mystical, and intuitionist versions similarly draw differently nuanced conclusions from this analysis of the role of dao s in nature and actual history.
Naturalism is inherently more egalitarian but tends, uncritically, to confuse being neutral with rejecting actually existing social dao. Despite the divergence in these versions of Daoism, all can claim to underwrite a theme of harmony with nature—the pluralist sees the point of such harmony as permissive and tolerant, while the primitivist sees it as a more intolerant rejection or prohibition of any conventional dao. Metaphysically, Daoism is naturalistic in that any first-order moral dao must be rooted in natural ways.
Like the varieties of metaphysical naturalism that eschew both a commitment to realism or anti-realism, it simply accepts natural dao without a separate theory of whether it is real or not. Much of the thrust of Daoism, as we have seen, naturally motivates a reaction against the moralistic and elitist inclinations of Confucianism. Confucianism stood for a rigid, detailed, traditional pattern of hierarchical social behavior. We can trace the origin of Daoism, accordingly, in two ways.
One is attitudinal, the other theoretical. The theoretical mark of Daoism is an interest in the meaning or nature of dao which may inform or encourage Daoist attitudes. In view of the religious strain, however, we have to recognize two attitudes as marks of proto-Daoism in China. The first is the vague reaction against the demanding scheme of traditional Confucian rules. Their approximate message was an early version of Yangist purification by withdrawal from society.
This attitude tends to be expressed as anti-moral or amoral mainly because it targets a Confucian conception that systematically elides morality and conventional mores. It also seems to include some of the attitudes that led to the agriculturalists with their opposition to the division of labor, the differential social status and ranks to which it gives rise.
These, however, seem to involve no meta-theory of dao of the type traced in the Zhuangzi history although they can be seen as early indications of the value of Daoist egalitarianism and impartiality. Yangism mainly proposes a shocking! At its core is an arguably Daoist worry that social conventions and structures damage our natural spontaneity and interfere with efficient functioning of our natural powers.
Early Chinese moral theory flowed too easily between mores and morality and we may see the lure of Daoist impartiality in the Yangist desire to dispense with relative social mores. It amounts to direct access to what, for ordinary people, is the product of interpreting a first order dao. Thus it lacks the inherent vagueness of a formulaic dao. Such intuitionism, while cursorily evading interpretive variability, led instead to insoluble conflicts of authority.
They disagreed with each other about who else had such access and any attempt to resolve that transmuted into an attempt to formulate or theorize about the intuition, thus threatening to abandon their hard won interpretive constancy. This is because the common formulation of these disputes constitutes a theory or dao of how to cultivate the unerring interpretive access to other dao.
Hal Roth emphasizes this line of thought and follows Graham in linking it to two recently prominent chapters of an early Legalist text, the Guanzi neiye inward training and xin shu heart-mind methods. Victor Mair, suggests that Yogic techniques, already transmitted from India, played this role. The epistemic commitment both hypotheses impute to their proto-Daoists, however, is that these techniques help achieve incorruptible practical access to the correct normative dao guide.
Usually this access was direct and unmediated by language or culture. So they might echo the anarchists rejection of rules or principles but for quite different reasons, i. The inferred interpretive reliability in this stream of Daoism reflects a kind of impartiality, the irresolvability of rival claims to infallible practical guidance threatens that goal. It can be developed in an egalitarian way i. One can, however, doubt that it is either a necessary or sufficient distinguisher of Daoism.
It finds a more comfortable home in proto-Legalist texts and arguably blends the ingredients of Huang-Lao ruler-worship. It is also quite obviously manifest in authoritarian and intuitionistic Confucianism with its emphasis on cultivation. Confucian interpretations, like religious ones, typically treat Daoists as making Confucian-style, elitist cultivation claims. Philosophical interpretations are naturally less comfortable taking these authoritarians as forerunners of Daoism and usually require some version of them that pushes them toward relativism or optimistic primitivism.
The esoteric or authoritarian developments seem too cavalierly to brush-off the skeptical doubts that generated philosophical reflection on dao and the impulse to seek an impartial resolution. A characteristically religious excuse for coercive indoctrination is available.
Thus the Huang-Lao tradition could mesh with the authoritarian Confucian and Legalist elites who dominated the Han. Just how far back its history extends into the classical period remains controversial. It was highly influential in the Qin and Han, when it seemed to be highly favored by the superstitious rulers.
Han historians categorized many of the figures in the Daoist history as students of Huang-Lao. Many scholars have treated the Mawang Dui discovery as proving the Laozi stems from such authoritarian forerunners of this cult. In the definitional texts, the Laozi and the Zhuangzi , the epistemic grounds are arguably more skeptical and perspectival than dogmatic. There is little unambiguous appeal to direct mystical experience or insight.
In these texts, hypothetical exemplars of such authoritative, superlative knowledge of dao are typically described as being both incomprehensible and irrelevant to us and our practical questions. In any case, the ambiguous style of both texts comports poorly with the implicit authoritarianism of the religious movement and it is very hard to show how philosophically the use of breathing techniques, meditation, proto-yogic practices or hallucinogens could vouchsafe such supernatural epistemic achievements.
They do nothing to explain or justify the sophisticated philosophical understanding of dao we can find in these texts. Ultimately, the philosophical question is whether these assertions of intuitionist access would or would not be refuted by the skeptical arguments that Zhuangzi directed against the Confucians. Modern champions of irrationalist Daoism, of course, would not be disturbed by this inconsistency, of course, since, they allege, that Daoists refuse to think logically.
Finally, like the attitudinal Daoist stream, the authoritarian intuition approach deals with the epistemology of access to dao rather than to an analysis of its nature and how insight into that nature can illuminate and correct disputes about first order dao. Clearly, we can use this history only with some caution.
We, however, must blend this internal Daoist history with external information about these groups and their thought to get a plausible explanatory justification for the classic Zhuangzi position. First, his early challenge to Confucianism initiated higher level philosophical reflections on dao , its role and the kind of thinking it involved.
Mozi, for example, theorized that a dao should be constant, not a matter of a special history or arbitrary social convention. He supported his use of a utilitarian standard to evaluate social dao s on grounds of the impartiality and constancy of the benefit-harm distinction. He thought of this as an objective fa standard for making shi-fei this-not this distinctions.
Mozi thus launched the meta-search for a way impartially to select a first-order dao. He formulates the initial version of the goal of unbiased, constant universality in morality. Both of these results, further, involved important theoretical insights into the concept of dao.
The Mohists developed much of the terminology of analysis that other Chinese thinkers, including Mencius and Zhuangzi, adopted. See Concepts. Zhuangzi deployed this language with considerable skill in his skeptical undermining of all claims to special moral authority.
However, Mohism did advocate a first order normative dao and followed Confucianism in the assumption that an orderly society needs to follow a single constant dao. Though they developed an account of how to justify a dao and first formulated the standard of dao adequacy constancy. What they did not notice was that those standards constituted a meta- dao —a dao for selecting and interpreting a first-order dao.
This reflects their failure to reflect on the nature of dao , and then to address whether and how such a dao was knowable. They disagreed with Confucianism mainly on the content of the dao guide to be imposed on society by authority while addressing only from their own perspective how that disagreement should be resolved.
Theoretical Daoism focused on the insolubility of this ru-mo Confucian-Mohist debate. We know far less of the doctrine of the next figure cited in the development—Song Xing. Our main sources are the Zhuangzi description here and a lengthy attack on Song Xing in the Xunzi. He is said to have specialized in a theory of the xin heart-mind and to have argued that socialization in conventional attitudes injected destructive values into the heart. The qing pre-social yu desires are relatively few and easy to satisfy.
Song Xin suggested that the conventional values, because of their social, comparative nature incite competition and then violence. The way to social order is for people to eliminate these socialize ambitions, which create attitudes of resentment and anger.
Hence his slogan that being insulted conventional value is no qing real disgrace. Mozi had also seen different dao s as a source of conflict, but advocated unifying the social dao rather than abandoning it. It has roots in the search for impartiality and universality that also motivated Mozi since it contrasts changeable social values with pre-social or natural ones.
The theme, however can have both elitist, dogmatic and supernatural elaborations. We might treat the ability to forget social conditioning returning to nature as something only some are capable of, ignore the self-rebutting threat of the attempt, and romanticize the abilities or moral purity that would result from removing socialization.
Zhuangzi built on a related view—that people develop different moral attitudes from different natural upbringings and each feels his own views are obvious and natural. So there is a role for Song Xing, along with Mozi in the motivations for Daoist theorizing. However, again we find little hint that Song Xing reflected on the concept of dao itself and how it is involved in this analysis of how society injects attitudes into xin heart-mind.
The first plausible candidate for a theoretical Daoist comes next in the Zhuangzi historical survey. We will pick Shen Dao as the best-known representative of this group of scholars. He is sometimes included in the list of Huang-Lao thinkers and cited as a source of Legalist thinking. We will not attempt here to reconcile this latter with the essentially Daoist view presented in the Zhuangzi history. In religious language, we can describe this as worshipping dao guide rather than tian nature:sky.
The key insight here is that like God and Nature appeal to tian nature:sky is normatively empty. All authority presupposes some dao guide. They even more clearly argue that the appeal to tian nature:sky could justify the thief as well as the sage.
For the general public, not cliques; changing and without selfishness; decisive but without any control; responsive to things without dividing in two. Not absorbed with reflection.
Not calculating in knowing how. Not choosing among natural kinds and flowing along with them. They took bonding all the natural kinds together as the key. Great dao guide can embrace it but cannot distinguish it. Dao guide does not leave anything out. He lived together with shi and fei , mixed acceptable and avoidable. He was indifferent to everything.
If he was pushed he went, if pulled he followed—like a leaf whirling in the stream, like a feather in a wind, like dust on a millstone. He was complete and distinguished fei nothing …. Even a clod of earth cannot miss Dao. It is really very strange…. Shen Dao avers that there is just one such total history—one actual past and one actual future. The actual is, obviously, natural so the great dao the natural pattern of behaviors, events and processes requires no learning, no knowledge, no language or shi-fei this-not this distinctions.
The crucial implication of his approach is that great dao has no normative force. Our death is part of great dao—down to its very moment. It recommends a particular possible future history. Why does Shen Dao think we should give up guiding ourselves by shared moral prescriptions? His stoic attitude and some of his slogans suggest that like the Stoics, he was a fatalist.
We should not make shi-fei this-not this judgments. Consequently, he should not be saying that we should follow the great dao, because that would be to shi this:right whatever actually happens. It simply happens. Further, his injunction against shi-fei judgments is an injunction—a negative prescription.
The concept of knowledge it uses is prescriptive knowledge. In form and intent, it is a prescription—a dao guide. If we obey it, we disobey it. This is our first example of Daoist paradox! Still, it places Shen Dao in the dialectic just before Laozi, who directly precedes Zhuangzi.
The Zhuangzi ordering is theoretically informative, though chronologically inaccurate. We will discuss, here, mainly the contributions the Laozi makes to this Daoist dialectic. For a more complete and detailed treatment of the philosophy of the text, see the entry under Laozi. The most famous line of Daoist meta-theory of dao opens the Daode Jing.
It thus shifts the focus of meta-discourse about dao from grounding its authority in nature to issues of language and the role of ming words in dao -ing. Since words are not constant, no dao that can be conveyed using words can be. What is being denied in saying such dao are not constant? The text does not elaborate on the concept, however the issue in ancient Chinese thought emerges as the crux of the dispute between Mohists and Confucians.
Mohists attempted to regiment the debate by insisting on fa standards for interpreting guiding language. Recent scholarship is moving toward a consensus that the persons who developed and collected the teachings of the DDJ played some role in advising civil administration, but they may also have been practitioners of ritual arts and what we would call religious rites. Be that as it may, many of the aphorisms directed toward rulers in the DDJ seem puzzling at first sight.
According to the DDJ, the proper ruler keeps the people without knowledge, ch. A sagely ruler reduces the size of the state and keeps the population small. Even though the ruler possesses weapons, they are not used ch. The ruler does not seek prominence. The ruler is a shadowy presence, never standing out chs.
This picture of rulership in the DDJ is all the more interesting when we remember that the philosopher and legalist political theorist named Han Feizi used the DDJ as a guide for the unification of China. Han Feizi was the foremost counselor of the first emperor of China, Qin Shihuangdi r. The second of the two most important classical texts of Daoism is the Zhuangzi.
This text is a collection of stories and remembered as well as imaginary conversations. The text is well known for its creativity and skillful use of language. Within the text we find longer and shorter treatises, stories, poetry, and aphorisms. The Zhuangzi may date as early as the 4 th century B. Unlike the Daodejing which is ascribed to the mythological Laozi, the Zhuangzi may actually contain materials from a teacher known as Zhuang Zhou who lived between B.
Although there are several versions of how the remainder of the Zhuangzi may be divided, one that is gaining currency is Chs. The way to this state is not the result of a withdrawal from life. However, it does require disengaging or emptying oneself of conventional values and the demarcations made by society. This baggage must be discarded before anyone can be zhenren , move in wu-wei and express profound virtue de.
For its examples of such living the Zhuangzi turns to analogies of craftsmen, athletes swimmers , ferrymen, cicada-catching men, woodcarvers, and even butchers.
One of the most famous stories in the text is that of Ding the Butcher, who learned what it means to wu wei through the perfection of his craft. When I first began cutting up oxen, all I could see was the ox itself.
After three years I no longer saw the whole ox. Perception and understanding have come to a stop and spirit moves where it wants. I go along with the natural makeup, strike in the big hollows, guide the knife through the big openings, and follow things as they are.
So I never touch the smallest ligament or tendon, much less a main joint. A good cook changes his knife once a year—because he cuts. A mediocre cook changes his knife once a month—because he hacks. There are spaces between the joints, and the blade of the knife has really no thickness…. The whole thing comes apart like a clod of earth crumbling to the ground. The point is not that wu-wei results from skill development. Wu-wei is not a cultivated skill.
It is a gift of oneness with dao. Persons who exemplify such understanding are called sages, zhenren, and immortals. Zhuangzi describes the Daoist sage in such a way as to suggest that such a person possesses extraordinary powers.
Just as the DDJ said that creatures do not harm the sages, the Zhuangzi also has a passage teaching that the zhenren exhibits wondrous powers, frees people from illness and is able to make the harvest plentiful ch. Just how we should take such remarks is not without controversy. To be sure, many Daoist in history took them literally and an entire tradition of the transcendents or immortals xian was collected in text and lore.
Zhuangzi is drawing on a set of beliefs about master teachers that were probably regarded as literal by many, although some think he meant these to be taken metaphorically. For example, when Zhuangzi says that the sage cannot be harmed or made to suffer by anything that life presents, does he mean this to be taken as saying that the zhenren is physically invincible? Or, does he mean that the sage has so freed himself from all conventional understandings that he refuses to recognize poverty as any more or less desirable than affluence, to recognize blindness as worse than sight, to recognize death as any less desirable than life?
It is a human judgment that what happens is beautiful or ugly, right or wrong, fortunate or not. The sage knows all things are one equal and does not judge.
Our lives are snarled and jumbled so long as we make conventional discriminations, but when we set them aside, we appear to others as extraordinary and enchanted.
An important theme in the Zhuangzi is the use of immortals to illustrate various points. Did Zhuangzi believe some persons physically lived forever?
Well, many Daoists did believe this. Did Zhuangzi believe that our substance was eternal and only our form changed? Almost certainly Zhuangzi thought that we were in a constant state of process, changing from one form into another see the exchange between Master Lai and Master Li in Ch.
In Daoism, immortality is the result of what may be described as a wu xing transformation. Zhuangzi wants to teach us how to engage in transformation through stillness, breathing, and experience of numinal power see ch. In the words of Lady Li in Ch. He has long been venerated in Chinese history as a cultural exemplar and the inventor of civilized human life. Daoism is filled with other accounts designed to show that those who learn to live according to the according to the dao have long lives.
Pengzu, one of the characters in the Zhuangzi, is said to have lived eight hundred years. The most prominent female immortal is Xiwangmu Queen Mother of the West , who was believed to reign over the sacred and mysterious Mount Kunlun. The passages containing stories of the Yellow Emperor in Zhuangzi provide a window into the views of rulership in the text. On the one hand, the Inner Chapters chs. On the other hand, the Yellow Emperor materials in Chs.
This second position is also that taken in the work entitled the Huainanzi see below. The Daoists did not think of immortality as a gift from a god, or an achievement in the religious sense commonly thought of in the West. It was a result of finding harmony with the dao , expressed through wisdom, meditation, and wu-wei.
The struggle to wu-wei was an effort to become immortal, to be born anew, to grow the embryo of immortality inside. A part of the disciplines of Daoism included imitation of the animals of nature, because they were thought to act without the intention and willfulness that characterized human decision making. Physical exercises included animal dances wu qin xi and movements designed to enable the unrestricted flow of the cosmic life force from which all things are made qi. These movements designed to channel the flow of qi became associated with what came to be called tai qi or qi gong.
Daoists practiced breathing exercises, used herbs and other pharmacological substances, and they employed an instruction booklet for sexual positions and intercourse, all designed to enhance the flow of qi energy. They even practiced external alchemy, using burners to modify the composition of cinnabar into mercury and made potions to drink and pills to ingest for the purpose of adding longevity.
Many Daoist practitioners died as a result of these alchemical substances, and even a few Emperors who followed their instructions lost their lives as well, Qinshihuang being the most famous.
The attitude and practices necessary to the pursuit of immortality made this life all the more significant. Butcher Ding is a master butcher because his qi is in harmony with the dao.
Daoist practices were meant for everyone, regardless of their origin, gender, social position, or wealth. However, Daoism was a complete philosophy of life and not an easy way to learn.
If they did not laugh, it would not be worthy of being the Dao. DDJ, Arguably, Daoism shared some emphases with classical Confucianism such as a this-worldly concern for the concrete details of life rather than speculation about abstractions and ideals. Nevertheless, it largely represented an alternative and critical tradition divergent from that of Confucius and his followers.
While many of these criticisms are subtle, some seem very clear. One of the most fundamental teachings of the DDJ is that human discriminations, such as those made in law, morality good, bad and aesthetics beauty, ugly actually create the troubles and problems humans experience, they do not solve them ch. The clear implication is that the person following the dao must cease ordering his life according to human-made distinctions ch.
Indeed, it is only when the dao recedes in its influence that these demarcations emerge chs. In contrast, Daoists believe that the dao is untangling the knots of life, blunting the sharp edges of relationships and problems, and turning down the light on painful occurrences ch. So, it is best to practice wu-wei in all endeavors, to act naturally and not willfully try to oppose or tamper with how reality is moving or try to control it by human discriminations.
Confucius and his followers wanted to change the world and be proactive in setting things straight. They wanted to tamper, orchestrate, plan, educate, develop, and propose solutions.
Daoists, on the other hand, take their hands off of life when Confucians want their fingerprints on everything. Imagine this comparison. If the Daoist goal is to become like a piece of unhewn and natural wood, the goal of the Confucians is to become a carved sculpture. The Daoists put the piece before us just as it is found in its naturalness, and the Confucians polish it, shape it, and decorate it.
This line of criticism is made very explicitly in the essay which makes up Zhuangzi Chs. Confucians think they can engineer reality, understand it, name it, control it. But the Daoists think that such endeavors are the source of our frustration and fragmentation DDJ, chs. They believe the Confucians create a gulf between humans and nature that weakens and destroys us. Indeed, as far as the Daoists are concerned, the Confucian project is like a cancer that saps our very life.
This is a fundamental difference in how these two great philosophical traditions think persons should approach life, and as shown above it is a consistent difference found also between the Zhuangzi and Confucianism. The Yellow Emperor sections of the Zhuangzi in Chs.
These materials provide a direct access into the Daoist criticism of the Confucian project. The teachings that were later called Daoism were closely associated with a stream of thought called Huanglao Dao Yellow Emperor-Laozi Dao in the 3rd and 2nd cn.
The thought world transmitted in this stream is what Sima Tan meant by Daojia. The Huanglao school is best understood as a lineage of Daoist practitioners mostly residing in the state of Qi modern Shandong area.
Huangdi was the name for the Yellow Emperor, from whom the rulers of Qi said they were descended. When Emperor Wu, the sixth sovereign of the Han dynasty r. And yet, at court, people still sought longevity and looked to Daoist masters for the secrets necessary for achieving it. Wu continued to engage in many Daoist practices, including the use of alchemy, climbing sacred Taishan Mt.
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