The Yellow Emperor’s Guru
A Narrative Analysis From Zhuangzi 莊子 11
Introduction
Of all the philosophical and religious works in the Chinese tradition, perhaps none contains as many varied and interesting literary forms as the Zhuangzi. Within its thirty-three chapters we find aphorisms, dialogues, poetry, instructions, explanatory and polemical essays, and narratives of various kinds, all filled with a panoply of characters both mythological and historical. As such, it provides an extremely fertile source for literary criticism and one that has remained virtually untapped.
Literary and historical criticism of religious works has been pioneered in the twentieth century by New Testament scholars working on the Synoptic Gospels. Their methods can be summarized under the heading of what one scholar—Stephen D. Moore—calls the “four criticisms”: form, redaction, composition, and narrative.1 Form criticism conducts an analysis of the standard genres or forms in which oral (or early written) tradition is cast and attempts to interpret each in terms of the “life setting” (Sitz im Leben) in which it was produced.2 Redaction criticism attempts to identify the theological or ideological viewpoints of the people who assembled the various literary forms into the texts as we now have them and to understand their own sociohistorical conditions.3 Composition criticism examines the literary techniques of the early redactors of a tradition, how they arranged and assembled their inherited material to create unified works.4 It is a holistic variant of redaction criticism in which the entire text is the context for interpreting any part of it.5
Indeed, these three methodologies are not unknown in sinology—even if they are not explicitly identified by these labels. Most relevant here is the research of Guan Feng 關鋒, Angus Graham, and, more recently, Liu Xiaogan 劉笑敢 on the various ideological viewpoints found among the thirty-three chapters of the Zhuangzi.6 Even if they do not all agree on the details, they are at various times implicitly utilizing all of the traditional forms of literary and historical criticism found in New Testament studies.
Narrative criticism differs from these other three methods in that it came into New Testament studies during the past two decades from outside the field—from the more general and theoretical area of literary criticism.7 Narrative criticism further differs in that its principal concern is not to identify inherent ideology or to relate the text to its sociohistorical conditions. Its main task is the critical analysis of narrative: what is the story (plot, characters, setting) and how is it communicated—that is, what is its form or “rhetoric?” For narrative critics, ideology is inseparable from story: form is content; content is form. They are also interested in identifying the “point of view” of the narrator and locating the “narratee” or implicit reader to whom the narrative is being addressed. In general, literary criticism looks askance at the possibility or necessity of deriving the original meaning intended by the author of a text and speak of it as the “intentional fallacy.” At its most extreme, literary criticism locates meaning in the responses of each reader to the text; so the text becomes not the original written or oral work but the multiplicity of individual reactions to the text by those who read it.
Despite its general lack of interest in authors’ ideology and historical circumstances, narrative criticism—at least in its less extreme forms—has much to offer the other three criticisms. Stephen Moore suggests that its analytical methods can help to identify the ideology of the authors of narratives and of those who compiled them into larger works, even if this is not a central concern for literary critics per se.8 Indeed, that is my interest in pursuing narrative criticism here. I would like to apply some of the most relevant techniques of narrative criticism to analyze the meaning and significance of one passage from the Zhuangzi, the story of the dialogue between the Yellow Emperor and his “guru” Guang Chengzi 廣成子 (“Master Broadly Complete”) from chapter 11, “To Preserve and Circumscribe” (“Zai you” 在宥).9 I seek to locate the key ideas expressed in the narrative, identify how they are communicated, and attempt to place them in a larger historical context. Because I am attempting to use narrative criticism in the service of redaction criticism to answer questions about the historical and philosophical context of the narrative, I depart from its more narrowly circumscribed purpose. I have therefore deemed this project a “narrative analysis” rather than a “narrative criticism.”
A Narrative Analysis of Zhuangzi 11/28–44
SUMMARY OF THE STORY
After ruling for nineteen years, an apparently dissatisfied Yellow Emperor goes to have an audience with the sage Guang Chengzi atop Vacant Merged Mountain. There, he asks about the essentials jing 精 of the utmost Way so he can use them to assist in nurturing the people.
Guang Chengzi rebukes him, saying how dare he ask about the substance of the very things of the cosmos that he has destroyed. Ever since he has been ruling, the basic patterns of the cosmos have been out of harmony.
The Yellow Emperor then gives up the empire and builds a special hut with mats of white reeds, where he stays in seclusion for three months. He then returns to have a more formal audience with Guang Chengzi, who now faces south like an emperor. He asks a new question: “How can I cultivate myself (zhi shen 治身 so that I can attain long life?” Guang Chengzi then provides detailed instructions on the utmost Way.
These instructions entail an internally focused meditation in which one casts aside sense perception and knowledge, does not belabor the body or agitate the vital essence, attains tranquility and stability, and can thereby keep the spirit firmly within the body. This confers longevity: indeed, Guang Chengzi claims to have lived for 1,200 years. It also facilitates an ascent to the source of yin and yang and a complete merging with Heaven and Earth. If one can cultivate himself like this, he advises, then all living things will flourish by themselves.
The Yellow Emperor is struck with awe. The master goes on to teach him about the implications of merging with the utmost Way that is unending and unfathomable. When you merge with what is immortal, in essence, you become immortal. This was done by the great emperors of the past and will be done again by the great kings to come (and you could be one of them, your majesty!).
The Rhetorical Structure of the Story
THE PLOT AND SETTING
The overall rhetorical structure of the story is in the form of a dialogue in which the Yellow Emperor requests information from a specialist teacher or from a trusted minister. This structure is known in a number of other important sources from both the naturalist technical literature and the philosophical literature. In the former, we find it, for example, in the Yin-Yang 陰陽 military text recently excavated from Yinqueshan 銀雀山 titled “Didian 地典.”10 We also find this dialogue structure in the “Ten Questions” (Shiwen 十問) medical text unearthed at Mawangdui 馬王堆.11 It is also the predominant literary device in the two Huangdi nei jing 黃帝內經 texts. In the philosophical literature, it occurs in four of the sections of the “Sixteen Canons” (Shiliu jing 十六經) text included among the Huang-Lao works excavated at Mawangdui, often called the Huang-Lao boshu 黃老帛書 (The Silk Manuscripts of the Yellow Emperor and Laozi 老子).12 The significance of this overall rhetorical structure is not to be overlooked; we return to it below.
In this group of texts, there are two dialogues that are most relevant to our passage from Zhuangzi 11, because in both the Yellow Emperor is taught techniques of inner or spiritual cultivation. These are the fourth instruction in the “Ten Questions” physical hygiene text from Mawangdui and the third section (titled “The Five Regulators” [Wuzheng 五正]) of the “Sixteen Canons” text in the Huang-Lao boshu.13 Of further interest is that, in the former, the teacher of the Yellow Emperor is a certain Rong Chengzi 容成子, a name quite similar to Guang Chengzi; in the latter, the teacher is a certain Yan Dan 閹聃, a name quite similar to Lao Dan 老聃, the reputed identity of Laozi.
In addition to this overall structure, the narrative has an internal structure that can be divided into three sections: 1. an introduction in two parts, each containing the narrative setting of audiences between the Yellow Emperor and Guang Chengzi; 2. the instructions on inner cultivation; 3. a denouement in which the type of immortality being taught is clearly specified. Among all the other Yellow Emperor passages in the texts mentioned above, narratives are found much more in the philosophical literature than in the technical literature. And virtually none, I would argue, provides as complete or as complex a narrative structure as our passage from Zhuangzi 11 (with the possible exception of its parallel narrative in the Huang-Lao boshu “Five Regulators” text).
While the names of the characters are different, the narrative immediately following our Yellow Emperor passage in Zhuangzi 11 has the same rhetorical structure. It is a dialogue between two characters named Cloud General (Yun Jiang 雲將), who represents a perplexed ruler, and Vast Obscurity (Hong Meng 鴻蒙), who represents a teacher adept at spiritual cultivation. Furthermore, it also contains the same tripartite internal structure of introduction-instruction-denouement. Looking at this from a composition-critical standpoint, I think these two passages were placed together because the compiler or redactor of our extant Zhuangzi also recognized their parallels. While there is no time to analyze this second passage in detail, because its rhetorical structure is so close to our Zhuangzi 11 passage, it can be used as a gloss.
THE CHARACTERS AND THEIR SYMBOLISM
Of the two characters in our narrative, the Yellow Emperor is the much better known. Indeed, several recent studies have explored the various symbolic associations of this important mythological figure, and they are so numerous that one might be concerned that he might be suffering from a bad case of multiple personalities.14 Nonetheless, certain definite characteristics do appear.
The Yellow Emperor is a primal ancestor of the Chinese people and, depending on the text, either the first or one of the first of the five emperors. He is seen as the inventor of certain basic cultural institutions and the conqueror of various barbarians and enemies. He is also depicted as a god of the center and of the earth, an “axial deity.” Beyond this, his image often depends on the filiation of the particular text in which he appears. Confucian texts emphasize his wisdom at ruling and his ability to pick and utilize able ministers. Daoist texts emphasize his associations with the various “esoteric arts.”
It is in this latter context that his dialogues in the naturalist technical literature are relevant to his image in our narrative. In these sources, the Yellow Emperor learns from the experts about the various technical arts such as warfare, physical hygiene, and medicine—as we have already seen—and other arts, such as yin-yang and five phase cosmology, astronomy, calendrics, immortality—if we can extrapolate from his name being found in the titles of long-lost works in these sections of the Hanshu “Bibliography.” The rhetorical device of the Yellow Emperor as the paradigmatic student of techniques (and the one student who can’t be flunked!) is certainly important in this literature and plays a major role in the symbolic context for the audience in our Zhuangzi narrative. However, what is never addressed in this technical literature (perhaps because it was already understood) is the even more basic question of why the Yellow Emperor wants to know all of this in the first place. A clear and resounding answer to this question is found in the Huang-Lao boshu texts from Mawangdui.
Here, for example in the “Sixteen Canons,” the Yellow Emperor is putting this kind of technical knowledge to work in the service of his sage rulership, his humane nurturing of the people. In the first section, “Establishing the Mandate,” we find a powerful image of his method of rulership:
In ancient times, the natural disposition of the Yellow Ancestor began from his love of reliability. At first he fashioned himself into an exemplary image with four faces to assist his unified mind. Reaching out from the center to all four directions, he aligned with what was in front of him, what was behind him, what was to his left, and what was to his right. Then, walking through these positions, he completed his alignments and, for this reason, was able to become the ancestor of all under Heaven.15
This provides a symbolic explanation of the image of the Yellow Emperor as an exemplary ruler who fully aligns the human polity (of which he is the primary representative) with the forces and patterns of Heaven and Earth, thus manifesting the triad of “tian-di-ren 天地人.” Why? Because, in his own words, “I am in awe of Heaven, love the Earth, and cherish the people.”16 We see further evidence of this activity in this section and in the next one, “Observation” (guan 觀), where the Yellow Emperor governs in accord with the overarching patterns of Heaven and Earth, particularly yin and yang. Thus he establishes the calendar in order to “match the movements of the sun and moon” and at the appropriate time regulates the people’s work in order not to oppose the seasons of Heaven.17 Here his most important techniques come from his knowledge of yin and yang, their associations and their seasonal alternations. In Robin Yates’s meticulous study of the Yin-Yang texts from Yinqueshan, we see in great detail all the myriad categorizations of phenomena and the seasonal prohibitions that Sima Tan 司馬談 undoubtedly had in mind when he said, “the techniques of the Naturalists magnify the importance of omens and proliferate prohibitions and taboos, causing people to feel constrained and to fear many things.”18 Regulating what the people should do on every day of every month of every season is the way to ensure that human beings act in harmony with the greater forces of Heaven and Earth. The answer to the question of why the Yellow Emperor wants to know all these things he is taught in Naturalist technical literature could very well be that he wants to know them in order to better govern and nurture the people as he does in the “Sixteen Canons.”
The Yellow Emperor appears in nineteen passages in the Zhuangzi, only two of which are in the “Inner Chapters.” In most of these he appears in his well-defined role as one of the five foundational emperors and is often simply mentioned in a passing reference. He is only really criticized twice, in the Primitivist polemic that immediately precedes our narrative from chapter 11 and in what I think is a Primitivist criticism of the decline of inner power caused by civilization in chapter 16, “Menders of Nature” (Shan xing 繕性).19 There are three narratives that could be relevant to the image of the Yellow Emperor in our passage.
In Zhuangzi 24, “Ghostless Xu” (Xu Wugui 徐無鬼), the Yellow Emperor goes to look for the “Great Clod” on Mt. Shady, gets lost, and meets a sagely boy tending horses.20 Impressed with the boy’s spiritual depth, he asks him how to take care of all under Heaven. After first declining to answer, the boy gives him a simple instruction: it is no different from tending horses. Simply get rid of whatever would harm them. The Yellow Emperor kowtows and calls the boy “Heavenly Master” (tianshi 天師) (an interesting phrase because of its parallels to later Daoism, though probably without that kind of meaning here). This story follows the same overall rhetorical structure as our passage, but the instructions to the Yellow Emperor are extremely simple and seem to advocate non-action rather than a regimen of inner cultivation. Although this passage has a similar rhetorical structure to our narrative from Zhuangzi 11, the content is too different to help with our analysis.
In chapter 22, “Knowledge Wanders North” (“Zhi bei you” 知北游), the character Knowledge has a lengthy discussion with the Yellow Emperor, who lectures him on the superiority of non-action and quotes three chapters from Laozi: 56, 18, and 48.21 This could indicate that the narrative was written after the development of a self-conscious tradition in which the Yellow Emperor and Laozi became symbolic spokesmen.
In chapter 14, “The Circuits of Heaven” (“Tian yun” 天運), there is an extremely important narrative in which the Yellow Emperor sets forth a very interesting musical performance of a piece called the “Pond of Totality.”22 What this seems to represent is a ritual reenactment of all the most important patterns, forces, and phenomena in Heaven and Earth. It is most instructive to see the Yellow Emperor here in the role of maestro, the conductor of the grand cosmic communion between Heaven, Earth, and Humankind. This fits well with his image in the “Sixteen Canons” text from the Mawangdui Huang-Lao boshu.
There is considerably less information to associate with Guang Chengzi. In fact, what little there is seems to stem from our Zhuangzi passage. Huainanzi 淮南子 14, “Inquiring Words” (“Quan yan” 詮言), quotes several lines from the instructions section of our narrative in a slightly different order, but adds nothing to our knowledge of the identity of this teacher.23 Later Daoist sources, starting with Ge Hong’s 葛洪 Shen Xian zhuan 神仙傳, classify him as an immortal, and some say that Guang Chengzi is simply another name for Laozi.24 This theory is also stated by the early Tang Daoist commentator Cheng Xuanying 成玄應.25 But because these sources are late, they can only tell us about how Guang Chengzi came to be thought of in the Daoist tradition.
As mentioned above, the fourth instruction in the “Ten Questions” physical hygiene text from Mawangdui contains a dialogue between the Yellow Emperor and a certain Rong Cheng 容成 in which the latter gives instructions in a form of breath meditation that, however, differ substantially from the instructions in Zhuangzi 11.26 While it also talks about the vital essence and spirit, this text is both more specific and more abstruse than the latter. While giving instructions in breathing, it contains a number of cryptic metaphors that bespeak an esoteric teaching needing the firsthand explanations of a teacher. Rong Cheng is associated with physical cultivation techniques, especially sexual practices in later sources.27 He also appears in lists of cultural founders in the Lüshi chunqiu 呂氏春秋 and Huainanzi as the inventor of calendrics.28 Finally, some later Daoist sources identify him with Guang Chengzi.29 While the parallel in the overall rhetorical structure of these two sources is suggestive, given the differences in their instructions and the differences in their names, we cannot identify these two teachers with one another. Thus, whatever we are to learn about Guang Chengzi must come directly from our Zhuangzi narrative.
THE IDEOLOGY AND RHETORIC OF THE NARRATIVE
It is now time to examine how these various elements of the story and its form come together in the narrative to express the ideology and point of view of its author. At first glance, the tripartite structure, introduction-instructions-denouement, makes it appear that the main focus is on the instructions themselves. Let us examine this further.
In the first audience in the introduction, the Yellow Emperor comes to Guang Chengzi requesting a secret teaching that would enable him to govern by “putting yin and yang to service in order to perfect the growth of everything” and thereby nurture the people.30 Guang Chengzi rebuffs him with a very pointed criticism. He says that the Yellow Emperor has not just made ruins of everything, but that he has also failed specifically in the mission we have seen him symbolically charged with in other sources: to coordinate the human world with the greater patterns of Heaven and Earth. It has rained before clouds fanned, leaves have fallen off trees while they were still green, and the sun and moon have grown increasingly dim.
In the parallel narrative that immediately follows, this problem is made more specific. The Yellow Emperor–like figure, Cloud General, is already aware of the fact that the world has become disordered: “the vital energy (qi 氣) of Heaven is inharmonious and the vital energy of Earth is in disarray. The six vital energies are discordant, and the four seasons are not regular.”31 Later in the narrative, his teacher, Vast Obscurity, refers to this situation in phrases reminiscent of the “Normative Standards” text in the Huang-Lao boshu collection from Mawangdui:32
Whatever disorders the warp of Heaven
And goes against (ni 逆) the true basis of things
Dark Heaven will not bring to completion.
It will disperse herds of beasts
And birds will sing at night
Disasters will strike grasses and trees
And calamities will affect reptiles and insects.33
Clearly, then, this problematic situation in both narratives works off the image of the Yellow Emperor as the coordinator of human beings with the greater patterns of Heaven and Earth, the political with the cosmological that would have been understood by the audience of the narrative. Because he has failed so miserably in this mission, the Yellow Emperor is dismissed by a distrusting Guang Chengzi: “you of the shallow fawner’s heart, why should you deserve to be told about the utmost Way?”34
The Yellow Emperor next does a most interesting thing: he relinquishes the throne, builds a special hut, furnishes it with nothing but mats of white straw (perhaps symbolizing purity), and lives there in retirement for three months. This retreat period is three years in the parallel story in the “Five Regulators” section of the “Sixteen Canons” from the Huang-Lao boshu and Cloud General also disappears for three years before his second audience with Vast Obscurity. These would have been well-known periods of retirement to the audience for this narrative: three months was the mourning period for Mohists, and three years was the period for Confucians, and Liezi 列子 retired for three years after Huzi’s 壺子 demonstration of his superiority over the shaman in Zhuangzi 7.35
This looks very much like a ritual act of purification on the part of the Yellow Emperor that causes a major shift in his personality. When he returns for the second audience, he treats Guang Chengzi with the utmost respect. Indeed, the teacher has now symbolically assumed the role of emperor and faces south, while his student bows and kowtows before him. The student then asks to be taught about how to regulate or cultivate himself (zhi shen) in order to attain long life. He receives this instruction, which is presented mostly in tetrasyllabic verse. This literary form is also found in the “Inward Training” essay from Guanzi that I maintain is the origin of an Inner Cultivation tradition of breath-meditation that was the primary technique in the early “Daoist” lineages and suggests that this instruction may have originated in an oral tradition within such a lineage and later been incorporated into this story.36 Indeed, the instruction of Guang Chengzi bears striking similarities with “Inward Training”: both talk about righting the body and attaining tranquility, reducing or eliminating perception and knowledge, preserving the vital essence, attaining longevity, and, most importantly, guarding the spirit or numen within.37 These apophatic techniques, and others like them, are widely attested in other extant texts from this general time period, such as other treatises in the Guanzi, the Lüshi chunqiu, the Huainanzi, and, as we shall see below, even in the Zhuangzi.38 Laozi, too, contains evidence of this kind of apophatic practice.39 Moreover, similar advice is given to Cloud General in the parallel narrative in chapter 11. In our narrative, however, Guang Chengzi puts a unique twist on the results of this form of spiritual cultivation, which I think is a significant invention of the author and not part of the original verse instruction:
為女入於窈冥之門, 至彼至陰之原也。
天地有官,
陰陽有藏,
慎守女身,
物將自壯。
我守其一,
以處其和。
故我修身千二百歲矣。吾形未常衰。
I will take you to a place above the Greatly Luminous
Reaching that which is the source of the Ultimate Yang.
I will take you through the Dark and Mysterious Gateway
Reaching that which is the source of the Ultimate Yin.
Heaven and Earth have their own offices;
Yin and Yang have their own treasuries.
Attentively guard your own person
And things will flourish by themselves.
I guard their unity within me
So that I may settle where they harmonize.
Thus have I cultivated my own person for 1200 years so that my form has never deteriorated.40
The apex of Guang Chengzi’s teaching resides here. In wonderfully evocative language, he explains that the ultimate goal of his practice is to merge completely with the unifying power in the cosmos, the Way, which is the ultimate source of Yin and Yang and of Heaven and Earth. This is the answer to the problem of how to once again set the world aright, cultivate yourself, and attain this profound union. When you can dwell in this unity, all things will flourish by themselves. This is very much a “Laoist” wuwei 無為 conclusion, and it is echoed in the parallel Cloud General passage, when Vast Obscurity teaches about “mind nourishing” (xin yang 心養):
汝徒處無為
而物自化。
墮爾形體,
吐爾聰明。
倫與物忘,
大同乎涬溟。
Just settle yourself in non-action and things will transform by themselves.
Drop off your bodily form.
Spit out your intellect.
Forget your relationships with things.
And you may merge in the totality of the boundless.41
Because Guang Chengzi can do this, he has lived for 1,200 years. The point is that through becoming one with what is eternal, one becomes eternal too.
So that no one misses this understanding of longevity and immortality, the author provides an elaboration in the denouement to our narrative, where Guang Chengzi states:
The things that belong to that are inexhaustible, but all men think they have an end. The things that belong to that are immeasurable, but people all think they have a limit. Those who attain my Way are like the emperors of the past and the kings to come. Those who lose my Way begin in the light of day and afterwards end up as earth …42
He then leaves his pupil and becomes one with the Way.
The Point of View of the Author
Literary critics distinguish between the point of view of the narrator and the author, but in this case, it seems to me that they are the same: the advocacy of the spiritual self-cultivation of the ruler as the essential element and most important technique of rulership. It is through this that the Yellow Emperor can assist in maintaining the delicate harmony and balance of the universal triad of Heaven, Earth, and Humankind. If he can become totally one with the Way, all the myriad things will develop and interact on their own in perfect harmony presumably because the forces of Heaven and Earth and yin and yang can take care of things by themselves. It is not a rejection of the existence of these overriding patterns and forces, but rather a recognition that they can function well when left alone, as long as the ruler is spiritually perfected. It seems to be aimed at those who maintain that successful government is based upon the detailed intentional coordination of the political and the cosmological, a description that sounds very much like the Yin-Yang Naturalist thinkers we encountered in the many texts from Yinqueshan. This kind of manipulation will not work if the ruler is not spiritually perfected.43 With this understanding of the story, rhetoric, and ideology of this narrative, we can now attempt to place it in a larger literary and intellectual context.
The Literary and Philosophical Context of the Narrative
There are several issues to be dealt with in order to determine the narrative context of our passage and to help complete our study of its meaning and implications. The first is the relatively straightforward issue of its location within the text of the Zhuangzi; this is a composition-critical question. The second is its role in the context of the Zhuangzi: why was it included in the text?
THE NARRATIVE’S LOCATION IN THE ZHUANGZI
According to A. C. Graham, the first part of chapter 11 (lines 1–28) is a Primitivist essay, a polemic written by the same author as chapters 8–11.44 Our Yellow Emperor narrative runs from lines 28–44, and the Cloud General narrative that parallels it runs from lines 44–57. The remainder looks very much like a pastiche of fragments with no overriding theme. Lines 57–61 are part of a Primitivist argument that Graham tacks onto lines 83–95 from chapter 12.45 He classifies the fragment in lines 61–63, a paragraph deploring “treating things as things,” as a “stray idea” on the theme of self-alienation.46 Lines 63–66 contain a brief “Great Man” story, and the remainder of the chapter, lines 66–74, is a Syncretist fragment discussing the importance of hierarchy in the government of the sage similar to the “Way of Heaven” (Tian Dao 天道) chapter’s discussion of hierarchy in 13/27–41.47
Whenever one sees this kind of hodgepodge in the Zhuangzi that contains no apparent theme and no rationale for inclusion, one is naturally led to suspect the mysterious hand of the third century redactor Guo Xiang 郭象, who reduced the original 52 chapter recension to our received text of 33. One way to detect his editorial work is to look for both a shift of viewpoint and the absence of early commentaries predating Guo for any section of text.48 These features suggest that the segment in question was not in this position in the original recension seen by these early commentators and very well could have been placed there by Guo when he broke up the other nineteen chapters.
Indeed, there are no extant commentaries earlier than Guo for the last quarter of chapter 11, lines 57–74. Given this and their varying viewpoints, they appear not to have been part of the original chapter. However, there are early commentaries for our two narratives, indicating that both were part of the chapter 11 from the outset. But why, because their viewpoints seem to share so little with the Primitivist polemic in the first part of the chapter?
The answer, I think, is twofold. First, the Primitivist polemic ends with a criticism of sage-emperors, beginning with the Yellow Emperor. Because our narrative contains the Yellow Emperor, the Han dynasty compiler may have included it here. The Cloud General narrative was added because its rhetorical structure is so close to that of our narrative. That is the simple reason.
The more complex reason is that there may not be that great a difference in the ideology of these two narratives and the Primitivist polemic in chapter 11. After all, both of our narratives end with a Laoist “non-action” perspective, and this they most certainly share with the first part of the chapter. The absence of inner cultivation theories in the various Primitivist polemics in the Zhuangzi need not indicate they were unimportant to their author, only that they were not relevant to the arguments he was making in them. Moreover, while a fuller analysis would be tangential to the current discussion, there do seem to be inner cultivation images in chapter 11, for example, the sage who “sits as still as a corpse, looks as majestic as a dragon, and from the silence of the abyss speaks with a voice of thunder.”49 Thus, it appears not only possible, but even likely, that Guang Chengzi may have been thought of as a Laoist teacher—if not by the author of our narrative, then certainly by the Zhuangzi compilers. This proves quite an interesting theory. If true, in light of our interpretation of the point of view of these narratives at the end of chapter 11, it could indicate that Zhuangzi compilers thought that the origins of their syncretic Huang-Lao lineage were to be found in a combination of Yin-Yang and Primitivism or “Laoist” theories of cosmology, self-cultivation, and government.
THE NARRATIVE’S PURPOSE IN THE ZHUANGZI
Turning to the role our narrative has in the context of the remainder of the Zhuangzi, we have already explored, in our discussion of him as a character in our story, the eighteen other passages in which the Yellow Emperor appears. The closest parallels to it are the Cloud General-Vast Obscurity narrative from chapter 11 and the Yellow Emperor’s dialogue with the boy in 24. Both have essentially a “Laoist” or “Primitivist” message: cultivate yourself and do not intervene too much. However, the image of the Yellow Emperor as the conductor of the grand ritual symphony called the “Pond of Totality” is much more a Syncretist image, very much in keeping, for example, with the image of this sage ruler in the Huang-Lao boshu. Graham has identified both Primitivist and Syncretist ideologies in the text and further asserted that the latter were its compilers. I have theorized further that these Syncretists were part of the Huang-Lao lineage of the early Han that descended from the authors of the Mawangdui Huang-Lao texts and that dominated the court of Liu An 劉安, second king of Huainan 淮南, where I concluded the Zhuangzi was compiled circa 130 BCE. Given our understanding of the ideology of our narrative and these hypotheses about early Daoist lineages, I propose that our narrative was included in the Zhuangzi because its Syncretist compilers thought it symbolized something extremely important in their own tradition: the initial merging of the Naturalist cosmological and political thought with Daoist techniques of spiritual cultivation.
Robin Yates has insightfully identified two significant differences between the Yin-Yang texts from Yinqueshan and the four distinct works in the Huang-Lao boshu from Mawangdui. First, while the Yinqueshan and the Mawangui texts both share a belief in the fundamental importance of complying with the various patterns and cycles of Heaven and Earth, the latter texts do this in a much more general fashion. They simply do not contain the thoroughgoing details of the former—either in classifying phenomena or in daily prohibitions. Second, there seems to be no interest in Daoist spiritual cultivation in the Yin-Yang sources. Indeed, this kind of inner cultivation is absolutely essential in order to give the ruler the “penetrating insight” through which “seeing and knowing are never deluded.”50 Elsewhere I have shown how the essay titled “Assessing” (“Lun” 論) in the “Normative Standards” presents the ruler’s self-cultivation in terms of a series of consecutive stages of breath-meditation that conforms to a rhetorical structure found in a number of other principal sources for the early Daoist practice of spiritual cultivation.51 The important point to be made here is that the Mawangdui Huang-Lao philosophical texts (at least most of them) look very much like a melding of Yin-Yang philosophy with Daoist cosmology and techniques of meditation. As such, they are closely related to our narrative. Perhaps the principal difference is that they pay more attention to the yin-yang side of things, to human compliance with the patterns of the cosmos. As such, they appear to represent a further development of the initial combination of Huang and Lao that we find in our narrative.
It is therefore not surprising that the one source outside the Zhuangzi with the closest parallel to our narrative in terms of rhetorical structure and content is the “Five Regulators” section in the “Sixteen Classics” from Mawangdui. Here we find the Yellow Emperor asking advice on government from a certain Yan Dan, who urges him to look within:
If your majesty does not yet know your own person, then submerge yourself fully within your source and thereby seek the inner model. Once you attain the inner model then you will know by yourself how to humble your own person [i.e., control your egotistical desires].52
Yan Dan elaborates: the true test of one’s self-cultivation is not to fight when one feels compelled to by egotistical desires and emotions, but rather to learn how to control them. The Yellow Emperor next retires to live in seclusion atop Extensive Hope Mountain and spends three years seeking within through a practice of quiet reclining (tian wo 恬臥).53 He then dispassionately goes out to defeat his archenemy, Chi You, who has violated the patterns of Heaven. This narrative further reinforces the viewpoint that the spiritual cultivation of the ruler is an essential technique of government
A still further development of this combination of Huang and Lao can be seen in the one chapter of the Zhuangzi that contains the strongest parallels with the instructions of Guang Chengzi from our narrative, chapter 15, “Finicky Notions” (“Ke yi” 刻意). This is an integral essay on how to “nourish the spirit” (yang shen 養神) whose author takes pains to differentiate clearly this practice from that of “nourishing the body” (yang xing 養形), which is followed by the physical hygiene practitioners of breath control and the “guiding and pulling” gymnastic exercises who take Pengzi 鵬子 as their founder. I consider this to be one of the last additions to the Zhuangzi for a number of reasons. First, its technical language and logic of argumentation are extremely close to the “Spiritual Essence” (“Jing shen” 精神) essay of the Huainanzi. Second, it shares many phrases with other important early sources of Daoist inner cultivation theory, including the “Inward Training” and “Techniques of the Mind I” essays from the Guanzi and the “Inquiring Words” essay from the Huainanzi.54 Third, it quotes several sentences from the Syncretist chapter 13 of the Zhuangzi.55 And finally, it contains two sentences used by Sima Tan in his presentation of the ideas of the Daoist lineage.56
In this essay, we see an advocacy of an apophatic practice quite similar to that of Guang Chengzi: limiting perception and relinquishing emotions, desires, and wisdom in order to become empty and tranquil and thereby preserve the vital essence and guard the spirit. However, there are some subtle but important differences. First, the “Finicky Notions” author makes no claims to attaining immortality, however one wants to conceive of it. Quoting an unnamed source, he says:
That the sage is born is because Heaven moves;
That the sage dies is because things transform.
Tranquil, he shares the power of the Yin;
Acting, he shares the surging of the Yang.
Second, this essay mentions some specific benefits for the sage ruler who practices this nurturing of the spirit, and it sees this practice as an integral part of its comprehensive philosophy for rulership, which it calls “The Way of Heaven and Earth.” For example:
[The Sage] responds only after he is stirred.
Acts only after he is pressed.
Rises up only when it is unavoidable.
He casts off knowledge and precedent
And complies with the patterns of Heaven (Tian li 天理).
Therefore he has no disasters from Heaven
And no attachments to its things.
He is not blamed by people
Nor attacked by ghosts …
In making the first point clear, the author of “Finicky Notions” is distinguishing his position from that of the seekers of immortality who may have followed similar cultivation practices, at least in pre-Han times. In making the second point, the author of “Finicky Notions” shows a further integration of inner cultivation practice into the Huang-Lao philosophy of rulership. Our narrative from Zhuangzi 11 advocates this Way but does not have much to say about the benefits for rulership for the sage who practices it (except for merging with the cosmos). In “Finicky Notions,” we see the sage ruler able to respond spontaneously to whatever arises and simply follow along with the greater patterns of Heaven, thereby avoiding all the various calamities that can befall a ruler.
The final piece of evidence I wish to present in support of this theory that our narrative of the Yellow Emperor and Guang Chengzi symbolizes regarding the origins of Huang-Lao thought is the passage from the “Inquiring Words” essay (#14 “Quanyan” 詮言) of the Huainanzi that quotes part of the latter’s instructions. After arguing that the foundation of establishing order in a state is ultimately grounded in the ruler’s cultivation of the emptiness and tranquility wherein the Way abides, the passage continues in a fashion reminiscent of the rhetoric of the Confucian “Great Learning” (Daxue 大學):
Those who are able to be in possession of the empire
Certainly do not neglect their states.
Those who are able to be in possession of their states
Certainly do not lose their families.
Those who are able to regulate their families
Certainly do not neglect their persons.
Those who are able to cultivate their persons
Certainly do not forget their minds.
Those who are able to reach the source of their minds
Certainly do not impair their natures.
Those who are able to keep their natures whole
Certainly have no doubts about the Way.
Therefore Guang Chengzi said:
Diligently guard what is within you;
Fully prevent it from being externalized.
Excessive knowledge is harmful.
Do not look! Do not listen!
Embrace the numen by being still
And the body will be naturally aligned.
There has never been anyone who was able to understand other things without first attaining it in within himself. Thus the Yijing 易經 says: “Tie it up in a bag. No blame. No praise.”57 (14/2b4–1l)
The point of this argument is its advocacy of the spiritual self-cultivation of the ruler as the essential tenet of rulership. It is most instructive that Guang Chengzi is used as the spokesman for this method of inner cultivation. It indicates that, for the Huainanzi circle and its audience, he was the foundational teacher of this method and its integration into a larger philosophy of government.
I have previously suggested that the literary circle at the court of Liu An was responsible for compiling the 52-chapter recension of the Zhuangzi.58 This means that the people who wrote the Huainanzi also compiled the Zhuangzi. I think it is no accident that the only two references to Guang Chengzi in the received literature are in these two texts. The author of the Huainanzi 14 passage quoted above seems to have drawn his summary of the instructions of Guang Chengzi from our Yellow Emperor narrative in Zhuangzi ll. The fact that he uses these instructions in the context of an argument that advocates what is perhaps the essential tenet of Han Dynasty Huang-Lao thought—the need for Daoistic spiritual cultivation of the ruler—is a strong indication that the Huainanzi authors saw our Zhuangzi narrative as symbolizing the initial merging of the teachings of Huang and Lao that were the foundations of their tradition. It is for this reason, I think, that this narrative was included in the Zhuangzi.
Conclusions: The Significance of the Narrative for the Early History of Daoism
In our analysis of this narrative of the Yellow Emperor and Guang Chengzi, we have seen how its various elements combine to communicate the point of view of its author. It is a clarion call for the Daoistic spiritual cultivation of the human ruler who attempts to coordinate the cosmological with the political. Prior to meeting his “guru,” the Yellow Emperor had failed in his rulership because his lack of self-realization had caused him to create a society that was fundamentally out of harmony with the greater patterns of Heaven and Earth. Only after he is able to cultivate himself and merge completely with the Way can he follow a governmental course of Non-action that enables the cosmos to evolve as it should according to these greater patterns and forces, especially yin and yang. In this narrative, the Yellow Emperor symbolizes the attempt to coordinate the cosmological and political by means of enacting ordinances based on Naturalist theories of yin and yang. Guang Chengzi symbolizes the Laoist philosophy of spiritual cultivation coupled with wuwei government and an implicit cosmology of the Way. Thus each character symbolizes one of the two most essential elements of Huang-Lao thought.
Of course Huang-Lao thought, as we know it, in the silk manuscripts from Mawangdui, in the Syncretist sections of the Zhuangzi, various essays in the Guanzi, the Huainanzi, and Sima Tan’s discussion of the six lineages cannot be simply reduced to these two factors. It contains a much broader intellectual range and includes ideas borrowed from the Confucians, Mohists, Terminologists, and Legalists. However, it is arguably the case that in Sima Tan’s assessment, these borrowed ideas were secondary; Daoistic spiritual cultivation and a political philosophy of coordinating the human polity with the greater patterns of the cosmos were the primary elements of the distinctive Daoist philosophy. So why could our narrative not be intended to represent the inception of Huang-Lao thought rather than its mature development?
A further consequence of seeing Guang Chengzi as a Laoist symbol in our narrative is that it associates it with the Laoist ideology in the Primitivist polemic from the first part of the chapter and hence with the Primitivist essays in chapters 8 through 10 as well. Not only does this suggest a rationale for our narrative’s inclusion in this chapter, but it also indicates that there may very well have been a significant element of spiritual cultivation implicit in the Primitivist position. The fact that Guang Chengzi claims great longevity and immortality further suggests a close relationship between early seekers of these goals and early Daoistic inner cultivation theories. It is of further interest that the Syncretist author of the “Finicky Notions” essay found it necessary to differentiate his teachings on spiritual self-cultivation from those of the longevity seekers who simply “nurture the body.” Symbolic fragments such as these suggest that there might have been a closer relationship between early Daoistic lineages and the various physical cultivation experts, as Donald Harper has been arguing.
In conclusion, by analyzing this one narrative from the Zhuangzi, I hope I have indicated something of the possible information that lies buried within its text for what I like to call the “hidden history” of Early Daoism. I hope further that this narrative analysis has indicated just a little of the potential that such a textual methodology has for studies of the historical, social, and philosophical contexts of early Chinese thought in general, and Daoism in particular. Narrative criticism, along with its complementary methodologies of form, redaction, and composition criticism, represents important tools of “textual archaeology” that, when combined with the fruits of physical archaeology, contain the promise of bringing us closer to deciphering the original meaning and significance of the ideas of those who walked the earth so long ago in a culture so different from own.
Appendix: Guang Chengzi’s Instructions on Inner Cultivation:
至道之精,
窈窈冥冥。
至道之極,
昏昏默默。
無視無聽,
抱神以靜,
形將自正。
必靜<心>[必]清,
無勞女形,
無搖女精,
乃可以長生。
目無所見,
耳無所聞,
心無所知：
女神將守形,
形乃長生。
慎女內,
閉女外,
我為女遂於大明之上。
至彼至陽之原也。
為女入於窈冥之門,
至彼至陰之原也。
天地有官,
陰陽有藏。
慎守女身,
物將自壯。
我守其一,
以處其和。
The quintessence of the Perfect Way
Is obscure, obscure, and deep, deep.
The zenith of the Perfect Way
Is dark, dark, silent, silent
Do not look; do not listen
Embrace the spirit using stillness
Then the body will become aligned on its own.
You must be still; you must be pure
Do not toil your body
Do you disturb your vital essence
And you will thereby attain long life.
When the eyes have nothing to see
When the ears have nothing to hear
When the mind has nothing to know:
Your spirit will be preserved within your body
And your body will attain long life.
Be attentive to what lies within you
Prevent it from becoming externalized
Excessive knowledge will destroy you.
I will take you to a place above the Greatly Luminous
Reaching that which is the source of the Ultimate Yang.
I will take you through the Dark and Mysterious Gateway
Reaching that which is the source of the Ultimate Yin.
Heaven and Earth have their own offices;
Yin and Yang have their own treasuries.
Attentively guard your own person
And things will flourish by themselves.
I guard their unity within me
So that I may settle where they harmonize.
Thus have I cultivated my own person for 1200 years so that my form has never deteriorated.