I

I CHING See YI CHING

IMMORTAL See HSIEN

IMMORTALITY. One of the major issues in every religious tradition is the concept of “life after death.” In China, this issue did not receive a uniform solution, each of the “Three Teachings” (san-chiao) had its own theory. In summary, one could state that Confucianism was skeptical and agnostic about the notion of the afterlife, although the ancestor cult was positively encouraged. Buddhism contributed a whole new vista to the Chinese otherworldly perspectives, and Taoism proposed several options, according to the TTC, the Chuang-tzu, the alchemists, and the Taoist institutional religion.

Neither the TTC nor the Chuang-tzu posit immortality as a goal to achieve. In the alchemical branch, on the other hand, longevity and hopefully immortality are believed to be a possible and desirable goal. In the Taoist institutional religion, the emphasis is on attaining this-worldly happiness, which can be achieved through ritual means. However, as was the case with the Popular religion, Buddhist views and ideals were added to it and merged with the original Taoist concept. The result of this mixing up of different outlooks has certainly confused the whole issue. Here, we should try to unravel the various strands of the tradition (see also the Taoist views of the soul).

First of all, is there any evidence of belief in immortality in the TTC? This short text combines a whole spectrum of themes, but the idea of life after death is not one of them. As much as possible, we must try to penetrate to the original author’s intent. Chapter 7 says that heaven-and-earth (the physical universe) is long lasting because it was not “born.” What is unborn does not die. All the myriad creatures, by contrast, are “born” or produced and, therefore, will come to their end, as Chapter 16 states.

While the myriad beings stir and strive,

I contemplate their return.

Indeed, the numerous beings

All return to their root.

Some passages (such as Chapter 50: 6–11) are ambiguous in that they project the possibility of deathlessness, for at least some rare persons, probably the “immortals” (hsien). But it is more likely that “longevity” was meant here.

One verse in particular has created a controversy in the past: Chapter 33:5. The common way of translating it was something like: “Who dies but does not perish has longevity.” There is an inherent contradiction between “die” and “not die,” and whatever one does to manipulate the text does not really help. The Ma-wang-tui manuscripts have shed new light on it and now the meaning is perfectly clear: “Who dies but is not forgotten has longevity.”

This new reading is based on a different Chinese character: Instead of wang (“to die”), there is another character wang (same as “to die” with “heart, mind” radical, which means “to forget”). It is probable that the line is a sort of popular proverb, or an aphorism, perhaps akin to Confucian thinking; immortality is understood as permanence of a good reputation, being remembered for one’s merits and continuation of the family in one’s offspring.

The Chuang-tzu deals with the question of life after death in much greater detail than the Lao-tzu. His many passages on death are among the most beautiful of the whole book, perhaps the most meaningful of all literature. Life and death are from heaven, i.e., nature. They are fated. Humans cannot do anything about their eventual occurrence. While unenlightened people resent fate and fear death, the true sage accepts it and sees it as part of the process of the transformation of things:

The True Man of ancient times knew nothing of loving life, knew nothing of hating death. He emerged without delight, he went back without a fuss. He came briskly, he went briskly, and that was all. He didn’t forget where he began, he didn’t try to find out where he would end. He received something and took pleasure in it; he forgot about it and handed it back again. (Chapter 6, Watson: 78)

In another passage, he compares life and death with the continuous succession of day and night, with the continuous cycle of the seasons: a natural process that we should accept graciously, because we cannot stop it anyway. Perhaps the most beautiful expression of this simple and inexorable “fact of life” is:

The Great Clod [earth] burdens me with form, labors me with life, eases me in old age, and rests me in death. So if I think well of my life, for the same reason I must think well of my death. (Chapter 6, Watson: 80)

If life and death are fated and unavoidable, what happens after death? Is there a sparkle of hope at least of some survival? That is for most humans the crucial reason to be religious: They fear that death is the absolute end and, if not, the terrors of torture in hell are a paralyzing force. For Chuang-tzu, there is no hell; death is the end of a minicycle (an individual existence), but the maxicycle, the creative process of the universe, goes on forever.

Two anecdotes in the Chuang-tzu illustrate this; both are stories about old gentlemen who became close friends in the shared knowledge that “. . . life and death, existence and annihilation, are all a single body” (Chapter 6, Watson: 84). When one of them fell ill and became deformed, he laughed at himself: “The Creator [Creative Force] is making me all crookedy like this! My back sticks up like a hunchback and my vital organs are on top of me . . . [Yet he remained] calm at heart and unconcerned” (Chapter 6, Watson: 84). Then he started speculating what his body would be transformed into: a rooster, a crossbow pellet, or cartwheels? In the other story, one of the old men says to his dying friend: “How marvelous the Creator is! What is he going to make of you next? Where is he going to send you? Will he make you into a rat’s liver? Will he make you into a bug’s arm? (Chapter 6, Watson: 85). Amusing speculation, but testimony of a cheerful acceptance of death, implying the dissolution of personal consciousness by merging with the infinite stream of creative potentiality.

Death is thus seen as the end of our individuality, our personal consciousness. What human beings usually think of as the animal kingdom also applies to themselves. There is no continuity after death, only reabsorption into the matrix of creation. This is in perfect agreement with what Chuang-tzu said in an earlier passage: “The Perfect Man (chi-jen) has no self” (Chapter 1, Watson: 32).

Chuang-tzu stresses this point when he compared the Creative Force with a skillful smith casting metal objects “. . . if the metal should leap up and say: ‘I insist on being made into a Mo-yeh’ [equivalent of Excalibur], he would surely regard it as very inauspicious metal indeed” (Chapter 6, Watson: 85). Similarly, humans cannot demand to be made into human beings again. Heaven and earth are a great furnace of creativity, creating and recreating without end. All beings coming out of the furnace return to it after only a short while, but the process goes on. Because Taoism often uses the analogy of water, one can add a new one (not found in the texts, though): Each being, human or other, is like a tiny drop of water, coming out of the ocean and, within seconds, returning to it. Would a drop dare to demand eternity?

For the views of the alchemists on longevity or immortality, see hsien and alchemy. It seems that the goal of Taoist practitioners was to prolong life and hopefully to reach the state of physical immortality in the end. Yet, this was a very elite ideal, beyond the reach of ordinary human beings.

Also complex is the case of the Taoist religion. In contrast with the views of the popular religion, and yet in some respects similar to it, the Taoist religion focuses on this-worldly happiness. At least this appears from the structure of the Taoist rituals, performed by the Heavenly Master Taoists. Their major ritual celebration, the Cosmic Renewal Festival, or chiao/jiao, is meant to bring down the blessings from the highest deities and to secure good fortune for the community in times to come. The added purpose of liberating the ancestral spirits from the netherworld appears to be a pre-Taoist but elite aspiration. But overall, although this is a paradoxical situation, the focus is not on immortality but on a blessed mortal existence. Then again, the case is different in monastic Taoism, where the goal is to become a hsien.

INCENSE. The offering of incense (by burning) is an almost universal practice in religious rituals. In China in particular, burning incense is an essential part of worship in all religious traditions, including Taoism. The origin of the custom has not been discovered, but there is a strong suspicion that it was introduced to China with Buddhism.

In the Taoist liturgy, incense is used in different ways: One lights incense sticks (in popular descriptions they are called “joss sticks”) and, while bowing toward the divine images and raising the hands three times, one presents them to these deities as an offering. Then they are placed in an incense burner on the altar. During special rituals, such as the Cosmic Renewal Festival, large (thick) incense sticks are used: One of the Taoist assistants distributes them to the attending laypeople, who hold them in their hands (or in special incense holders) for the duration of the ritual.

In the Popular religion, incense sticks are used in a similar way: When devotees go to the temple, they purchase a package of incense and “spirit-money” and offer the incense to the gods, first to heaven (T’ien-kung), next to the major deity of the temple, finally, to all the subsidiary deities on side altars. In the ancestor cult, incense sticks are offered every day at the home shrine—at least that is the ideal practice.

Then there is also incense powder: a fine yellowish dust made from sandalwood and other aromatic plants. During rituals, powder is put inside incense burners, on top of burning coal. It burns up slowly, but the smell is extremely pleasing (in Taiwan, this kind of incense is very expensive, and there are different grades of quality). More rarely, one sees the burning of small chips of aromatic wood used as incense.

One could say that offering incense is one of the essential aspects of Chinese religion. It is not so much meant as a means of purification (there are other methods for that, such as producing clouds of smoke), but as an offering to the divine personnel that is pleasing and inclines them to be generous.

Incense is also an important aspect of the Christian liturgy, especially in the Greek Orthodox and Roman Catholic traditions. It would be worthwhile to investigate its origins; maybe Persia or India are the lands of origin. From there it may have spread both East and West.

INNER ALCHEMY (Nei-tan/neidan). Inner or internal alchemy has been called “proto-biochemistry.” In contrast with outer alchemy, “operations” take place inside one’s own body:

The Chinese adept of the “inner elixir” . . . believed that by doing things with one’s own body, a physiological medicine of longevity and even immortality could be prepared within it. (J. Needham V, 5: 23)

To “do things with one’s own body” includes a variety of practices on the spiritual-mystical level: meditation, guiding and circulating one’s ch’i (energy, breath) throughout one’s body, but also worship of the deities residing in one’s body. Diet is not an essential aspect of nei-tan, but rather a condition; so is moral behavior, because the indwelling spirits would report to heaven about an adept’s moral misbehavior, and this would be counterproductive as it results in shortening one’s lifespan. Gymnastics and ch’i-kung can be helpful as auxiliary practices, but do not constitute the essence of nei-tan.

This body of spiritual techniques is not alchemy proper. However, because it developed out of wai-tan and was probably practiced in combination with it, alchemical language was used to describe its processes. As in the case of the second-century treatise Ts’an-t’ung-ch’i (Kinship of the Three), alchemical language often became very ambiguous, so that commentators are divided about the text’s intention: Does it describe wai-tan or nei-tan?

If outer alchemy aims at purification of various materials to produce life-prolonging medicine, inner alchemy aims at the purification or refinement of the adept’s body-mind unit, also hoping to conquer death and attain the state of immortal hsien-ship, but the means of attaining it were not necessarily agreed upon by all:

. . . some seeing the end of meditation as the physical and spiritual transformation of man into an immortal, a godlike being with an indestructible spiritual body infusing and illuminating the physical body. Others saw it as the transformation of man into a new spiritual state through the mind, a mind made new, reborn into its original state of unity with the Tao, a mind of pure luminosity which could light the entire cosmos. (J. Berling, 1980: 94)

This conception of inner alchemy has strong affinities with Indian and Tibetan yogas. Whether there have been historical influences in either direction is still not settled. But the Taoist yoga of inner alchemy is distinctly Chinese in that it is based on the Yin-Yang World-view and the Five Agents Theory. It uses in particular the basic trigrams of the Yi ching: ch’ien and k’un , representing heaven and earth on the cosmic level, the cauldron (furnace) on the alchemical level, and the body on the human level. Two other trigrams are equally important: li and k’an , representing fire and water and, in alchemy, also lead and mercury. Inner alchemy consists of uniting the opposites inside one’s own body, in the “cauldron” of one’s own body by a process of spiritual refinement that will ultimately produce a spiritualized body that is incorruptible and has many transcendent powers (I. Robinet, 1986: 383).

This view of alchemy is different from its Western counterpart: In mystical theology, the focus of spiritual practice is also on “purification” of the soul, but the body is not an integral part of the process. The body, as in dualistic systems, is rather the adversary.

Inner alchemy, as it gradually developed, started to focus on two distinct aspects of a human being: nature and life.

Nature (hsing) is what constitutes a human being; it is the source of human faculties, including the spirit (shen). Life (ming) is the actual sum total of all one’s vital energies, which make nature come alive. It includes the three primary vitalities, which give real existence to what otherwise would be an abstraction, nature. Through cultivation of the three vitalities, a Taoist adept is able to reverse the natural flow of energy dissipation and return “to the non-differentiated state at the beginning of creation, that which antedated heaven . . . Through this re-creation, the Taoist became physically and spiritually identified with the underlying cosmic unity of the Tao” (Berling: 95–96). (See also hsien, outer alchemy, alchemy, Three Primary Vitalities.)

Procedures/Techniques Used in Nei-Tan

Whoever aspired to becoming an “accomplished person,” a chen-jen or a hsien, had a rigorous program of spiritual practices and procedures available. They are not all equally necessary: An adept had some choice. Some procedures, however, were essential. Needham (II: 143–152) lists six techniques: respiratory techniques (see Breathing Exercises); heliotherapeutic techniques (exposure to sun rays, or to moon rays for women); gymnastic techniques (see Gymnastics); sexual techniques (see Sexuality; Union of Energies); alchemical and pharmaceutical techniques; dietary techniques (see Diet).

An auxiliary procedure, optional to some degree, was the use of alchemical pills. More important, recommended together with breathing and sexual techniques, was the conservation of bodily fluids, especially saliva and semen.

To conclude: Even if some of these concepts and practices strike a Western reader as weird and out of this world, it cannot be denied that their impact on a serious adept could be surprising. Even if immortality, claimed or pretended, remains questionable, the spiritual program of inner alchemy and its various concomitant practices were often instrumental in obtaining a long and healthy life. That cannot be underestimated.