The Laozi 老子 in the
Context of Early Daoist Mystical Praxis
To know others is to be clever
To know oneself is to be clear …
—Laozi 33
Introduction
One of the few areas of agreement between sinologists and scholars of Comparative Religion is in regarding the Laozi as an important work of mysticism. Scholars from Wing-Tsit Chan to Benjamin Schwartz in the former group and from Walter Stace to Wayne Proudfoot in the latter group share this common understanding of the text as they make use of it in a wide variety of intellectual endeavors.1 While this is by no means a unanimous view (see the contrary opinions of D. C. Lau and Chad Hansen), it is certainly held by a great many scholars.2 Despite this surprising unanimity, when one examines the views of these scholars more closely, there is an equally surprising lack of a comprehensive discussion of why they regard the Laozi as a mystical text in the first place.
Some scholars simply use the term “mysticism” uncritically, as in Chan’s accurate but overly general observation that the Laozi is a “combination of poetry, philosophical speculation, and mystical reflection.”3 Others use passages from the Laozi to illustrate their general theories about mysticism. For example, Stace uses chapters 4 and 14 in his discussion of the epistemology of mystical experience to illustrate an important characteristic of the “objective referent” of mystical experience, namely that it is paradoxically spoken of as a “vacuum-plenum.”4 Proudfoot uses chapter 1 of the Laozi to illustrate how the supposed ineffability of mystical experience is really a characteristic of grammatical rules embedded in religious doctrine.5 Two fuller approaches are found in the writings of Livia Kohn and Benjamin Schwartz. In her pioneering study of Daoist mysticism, Kohn correctly accepts the assumption that the mystical philosophy of the Laozi and Zhuangzi 莊子 is derived directly from the experience of practicing mystics, and she usefully defines such philosophy as “… the theoretical, conceptual description of the mystical worldview … the intellectual framework that provides an explanation and systematic interpretation of increasingly sophisticated spiritual experiences.”6 She founders, however, in a largely unsuccessful attempt to integrate several contradictory approaches in mysticism theory to forge her own definition. Furthermore, her discussion of the mysticism of the Laozi is simply an analysis of its philosophy with no specific attempt to demonstrate how this philosophy is mystical, according to her definitions.7
While hardly a thorough textual analysis, Schwartz provides a more sustained attempt to demonstrate the presence of mystical philosophy in the Laozi.8 Arguing from a cross-cultural foundation that is rare among sinologists, Schwartz sees mystical philosophy in the Laozi’s cosmology of the paradoxically determinate and indeterminate Dao, the source of meaning for all human beings that can only be known through the “higher direct knowledge” of gnosis. However, in an effort to deflate arguments asserting the non-mystical nature of the Laozi based upon the absence of specific techniques for attaining mystical experience in the text, Schwartz downplays the importance of such techniques and emphasizes, instead, the vision of reality with which they are associated. In my opinion, he does not need to take such an approach.
What I attempt to demonstrate in this chapter is that mystical praxis is at the very heart of the Laozi. While, of course, it is not present in all its chapters, there is sufficient textual evidence for both mystical praxis and its resultant mystical experience in the work to provide a firm basis for any future scholars who wish to pursue the demonstration of how these two closely related aspects of mysticism are the foundations of the mystical philosophy of the text. Prior scholarship has not noted the extent of such textual evidence because the Laozi largely has been regarded as a work of philosophy produced by a school of philosophy. In order to counter this prevailing view, I first summarize my recent research on the historical and religious context from which the Laozi emerged. I next present the elements of mysticism theory that I have found most valuable in developing definitions of early Daoist mysticism. I then proceed to a study of the passages on mystical praxis and mystical experience in the Laozi in which I attempt to explain their meaning and significance by comparing them with parallel passages in a number of other important textual sources of early Daoist mysticism.
Historical Context
In contrast to the traditional view, I do not regard the Laozi and Zhuangzi as the sole foundational texts of Daoism. Nor do I think there was a “Lao-Zhuang” 老莊 school of Daoist thought until its retrospective establishment by the Profound Learning (xuanxue 玄學) literati of the third century CE. Indeed, I have grave doubts that any of Sima Tan’s 司馬談 so-translated “schools of philosophy” were “schools,” as we might think of them today, with a clear self-identity and a well-defined organization and curriculum, much less schools whose principal raison d’etre was philosophical speculation.9
Rather, my research has suggested that, particularly in the case of Daoism, the foundational texts of the tradition were produced within one or more closely related master-disciple lineages whose principal focus was learning and practicing specific techniques (shu 術).10 Indeed, these techniques are so central to the tradition that from a very early period, that of the “inner chapters” of the Zhuangzi (ca. 300 BCE), they are referred to as the “techniques of the Way” (Dao shu 道術).11 While these eventually came to include methods of political and social organization and a variety of investigations of the natural world (and their associated yinyang and Five Phase theories), the single most important technique was that of guiding and refining the flow of vital energy or vital breath (qi 氣) within the human organism.12 This seems to have been accomplished in two possibly complementary ways, the first a kind of active or moving meditation whose postures resembled modern positions in taiji太極 and qigong 氣功, and the second a kind of still, sitting meditation that involved regularized natural breathing.13 It is this second form, which entails the apophatic practice of removing the normal contents of the mind to produce a profound tranquility with a decisively noetic character, that I have called “inner cultivation.”14
According to this view, the texts we have come to regard as the foundations of Daoist philosophy are not filled with abstract metaphysical speculation that has no basis in nondiscursive experience, but are, rather, works written to elucidate the insight attained from inner cultivation practices and to discuss their practical benefits. This latter aspect would have been particularly critical in late Warring States China in order to persuade local kings of the value of adapting the teachings being advocated and thereby winning their favor and a position within the court from which to continue these pursuits. We have some historical certainty that such conditions did exist, for example, at such disparate courts as those of the states of Qi 齊 (ca. 320–260 BCE), Qin 秦 (ca. 241 BCE), and, later, the Han 漢 state of Huainan 淮南 (ca. 150–122 BCE). Each court produced a book containing collections of teachings from a variety of Daoist and non-Daoist lineages: the Guanzi 管子, the Lüshi chunqiu 呂氏春秋, and the Huainanzi 淮南子, respectively, which are all important sources for early Daoist thought.
Therefore, it is my contention that the Laozi can best be understood by placing it—as much as we possibly can, given the limits of the extant textual corpus—within its historical context. Perhaps the most ambitious attempt to do this until now is the work of Michael LaFargue in his innovative application of the Biblical Studies methodologies of form and redaction criticism to the Laozi.15 While LaFargue’s work is not without its problems, it has developed some important hypotheses about the nature of the text and its origins. One of the most important (and one that I currently share) is that the Laozi is the product of a group or community whose foundation was first and foremost a shared practice of “self-cultivation.” According to LaFargue, it is from this practice that many of the more “mystical” passages in the text arose, sayings that I examine in this chapter.
The attempt to apply these “mystical” teachings to the problems of governing in late Warring States China constitutes an important element of the Laozi. The particular form of political thought it advocates helps to define one of the three principal phases of early Daoism (the “Primitivist” as opposed to the “Individualist” and the “Syncretist”) I have identified in previous publications.16 However, in this chapter I focus not on the distinctive political philosophy of the Laozi but rather on the evidence it contains for this community’s practice of inner cultivation and how it relates to similar evidence in the other early textual sources of Daoism. Most relevant among these sources is the essay titled “Inward Training” (“Neiye” 內業) from the Guanzi. I also place the Laozi’s evidence for inner cultivation in the context of evidence for analogous apophatic practices and results in the other early Daoist textual sources mentioned above.
Theoretical Context: Mysticism, Meditation, and the Laozi
Seeing the Laozi as the product of a lineage involved in apophatic practices of directed breathing meditation enables us to put the text directly into dialogue with similar practices in other cultures and traditions and with modern Western scholarship on the philosophical and psychological implications of such practices. In the following section, I define those elements of mysticism theory that I think are most relevant to the study of the Laozi and show how they are related to one another.17
The cross-cultural study of “mysticism” is very much a modern Western phenomenon that began with the publication of William James’s Varieties of Religious Experience in 1902.18 This work presents a phenomenology of religious experiences and identifies the subset of mystical experiences as being 1. ineffable; 2. noetic; 3. transient; 4. passive; and 5. transformational.19 Following the lead of James, scholars from Evelyn Underhill to Robert Forman have pursued the study of mysticism along the following two lines, clearly adumbrated by Peter Moore:
The philosophical analysis of mysticism comprises two overlapping lines of inquiry: on the one hand the identification and classification of the phenomenological characteristics of mystical experience, and on the other the investigation of the epistemological and ontological status of this experience. The first line of inquiry is generally focused on the question whether the mystical experiences reported in different cultures and religious traditions are basically of the same type or whether there are significantly different types. The second line of inquiry centres on the question whether mystical experiences are purely subjective phenomena or whether they have the kind of objective validity and metaphysical significance that mystics and others claim for them …20
In other words, the former line deals with the nature and characteristics of mystical experience and the latter deals with the various philosophical claims that are made on the basis of mystical experience. These overlapping lines of inquiry indicate that two fundamental aspects of mysticism are mystical experience and the mystical philosophy that is derived from it.
Walter Stace delineates two fundamental forms of mystical experience, “extrovertive” and “introvertive.”21 Extrovertive looks outward through the senses of the individual and sees a fundamental unity between this individual and the world. In this form there is a simultaneous perception of the one and the many, unity and multiplicity. Introvertive mystical experience looks inward and is exclusively an experience of unity, that is, an experience of unitive or what some scholars (Forman et al.) call “pure” or object-less consciousness.22 I have found this basic differentiation to be extremely useful and see it in early Daoism in what I call the “bimodal” character of its mystical experience, a concept that I explain further below.23
For Stace, mystical philosophy takes its most fundamental concepts from mystical experience. First and foremost are the varying notions of “the One” in different religious traditions that are ultimately derived from the introvertive mystical experience of complete union. Brahman for Hindu mystics, God for Christian mystics, the One for Plotinus, the Dao 道 for the Daoists, the unconditioned for “Hinayana” Buddhists—these are all philosophical expressions of the “universal self” that is derived from this unitive experience.24 While scholars may wish to debate whether these concepts are derivative of mystical union or cause this experience, the fact remains that there is a very intimate connection between these two aspects of mysticism.25
Peter Moore argues that a particularly crucial element of mysticism is the intimate connection between mystical experiences and what he calls “mystical techniques,” the practices that are used to “induce” them.26 He distinguishes between two primary techniques that represent the “immediate preconditions” for mystical experience, “meditation” and “contemplation.” The former entails “the disciplined but creative application of the imagination and discursive thought to an often complex religious theme or subject-matter.” The latter, a development of the former, entails the attempt “to transcend the activities of the imagination and intellect through an intuitive concentration on some simple object, image, or idea.”27 It seems to me that focusing on one’s breathing in a systematic fashion would be an example of the latter. While this differentiation is instructive, because of the relatively poor state of our knowledge of the specifics of early Daoist mystical techniques—in particular, how the imagination and intellect are used in them—and because of the use of the former term in common parlance, I have used—and continue to use—“meditation” to refer broadly to both of these techniques.
Mystical techniques are further clarified in the writings of Robert Forman and Donald Rothberg. Forman, following the phenomenological tradition of James and Stace, argues that the “Pure Consciousness Event (PCE)” (defined as a wakeful though contentless [nonintentional] consciousness)—his version of the latter’s introvertive mystical experience—comes about through a systematic process of “forgetting.”28 This is elaborated upon by Rothberg:
Robert Forman … has proposed a model of mystical development (in many traditions) as involving the “forgetting” (Meister Eckhardt’s term) of the major cognitive and affective structures of experience … In this process of “forgetting,” there is an intentional dropping of desires, ideas, conceptual forms (including those of one’s tradition), sensations, imagery, and so on. The end of this process is a contentless mystical experience in which the constructs of the tradition are transcended …29
Citing the twelve-year research project on meditative praxis in three Indo-Tibetan traditions by the psychologist Daniel Brown, Rothberg argues that the spiritual path involves, in many traditions, “a process of progressive deconstruction of the structures of experience.”30 These include, for Brown, attitudes and behavioral schemes, thinking, gross perception, self-system, and “time-space matrix.”31 This is not to argue that the spiritual path is the same in every tradition. Indeed, as Rothberg argues, “each path of deconstruction or deconditioning is itself constructed or conditioned in a certain way.”32 Nor do he and Forman argue that pure consciousness is the only goal of all mystic paths. Indeed, the entire Forman collection intentionally passes over the important extrovertive aspect of mystical experience, unfairly denigrated by Stace, and, I would argue, extremely important to the understanding of early Daoist mysticism.33
In a recent review essay, I argued for the presence of a “bimodal” mystical experience in early Daoism, particularly evident in the “inner chapters” of the Zhuangzi.34 The first mode is an introvertive unitive consciousness in which the adept achieves complete union with the Dao. This corresponds, in general, with Stace’s “introvertive mystical experience” and with Forman’s “Pure Consciousness Event.” The second is an extrovertive transformed consciousness in which the adept returns to the world and retains, amid the flow of daily life, a profound sense of the unity previously experienced in the introvertive mode. This experience entails an ability to live in the world free from the limited and biased perspective of the individual ego. This second mode corresponds, in general, to Stace’s “extrovertive mystical experience,” although I would regard it as a quite profound subcategory of it.35 This bimodal character of mystical experience is, actually, quite prevalent in mystical experience across traditions, but it is often overlooked by scholars, who tend to focus on the introvertive mode exclusively.36 While evidence for its presence is not as strong in the Laozi as in the Zhuangzi, it is, as we shall see, most certainly there.
Finally, in the philosophical analysis of mysticism there is also a great deal of attention paid to mystical language, and herein I am concerned with one particular subset of it, the unique language that evolves within mystical praxis. Brown witnessed this in his study of Tibetan monastic communities, where there was a body of teachings about the internal states attained through mystical praxis to which an adept could compare his or her experience. He goes on:
In such traditions, where meditation practice is socially organized, a technical language for meditation experience evolved. This language was refined over generations. The technical terms do not have external referents, e.g., “house,” but refer to replicable internal states which can be identified by anyone doing the same practice, e.g., “energy currents,” or “seed meditations.” Much like the specialized languages of math, chemistry, or physics, technical meditation language is usually intelligible only to those specialized audiences of yogis familiar with the experiences in question …37
LaFargue sees this kind of language present in the Laozi, and I concur.38 I would also extend this to the other textual sources of early Daoism, including, most importantly, “Inward Training.” The great challenge facing modern scholars who wish to study this specialized mystical language is to make sense of what it really meant to the people who used it. While this is not as much a problem when technical terms are primarily descriptive, as for example, in Zhuangzi’s famous prescription for how to just “sit and forget,” the more metaphorical the language becomes (see, later in the same sentence, “I … merge with the universal thoroughfare”), the more challenging it is to interpret.39 In this chapter, I attempt to explain the meaning of some of the important technical terms and phrases of mystical praxis in the Laozi through extensive cross-referencing to other early Daoist works and through cross-cultural comparisons to mystical techniques in other traditions. I see this attempt as a plausible reconstruction, but certainly not the only one possible.
Using the above definitions of the various aspects of mysticism, I concentrate on presenting and analyzing the textual evidence for mystical techniques and their resultant mystical experiences in the Laozi under the general heading of “mystical praxis.” In doing this, I make extensive use of relevant passages from the other important works that I have identified in my research on the historical context of early Daoism. Because of the practical limitations of the present article, I do not make anything more than general assertions about the relationship of mystical experience to mystical philosophy in the Laozi and leave a more detailed study for another time.
Mystical Praxis in the Laozi
MYSTICISM AND MEDITATION IN EARLY DAOISM
Perhaps the most direct passage on mystical praxis in the Laozi is chapter 10:
Amidst the daily activity of the psyche, can you embrace the One and not depart from it?
When concentrating your vital breath until it is at its softest, can you be like a child?
Can you sweep clean your Profound Mirror so you are able to have no flaws in it?
In loving the people and governing the state, can you do it without using knowledge?
When the Gates of Heaven open and close, can you become feminine?
In clarifying all within the four directions, can you do it without using knowledge?40
Because this passage contains the kind of technical language of meditation that Brown found in his Tibetan communities and LaFargue sees in the Laozi, it has caused scholars great difficulty. Lau sees “some sort of breathing exercise or perhaps even yogic practice” here, but considers it an atypical passage that could have come from a school interested in the prolongation of life, not the avoidance of untimely death that characterizes the Laozi.41 Chan rejects the entire claim that breathing meditation is involved: “The concentration of qi (vital force, breath) is not yoga, as Waley thinks it is. Yoga aims at transcending the self and the external environment. Nothing of the sort is intended here.”42 Their failure to understand the passage has a twofold origin: failure to understand the larger context of early Daoist mystical praxis and the Laozi passages that contain evidence of it and failure to understand the nature of mysticism. After examining mystical praxis in the Laozi in the light of these two critical understandings, I return to an analysis of this passage.
A familiar place to begin discussing the greater context of early Daoist mystical praxis is with the Zhuangzi passage on “sitting and forgetting.” Here Confucius’s favorite disciple Yan Hui ironically “turns the tables” on his master by teaching him how to “sit and forget” (zuo wang 坐忘):
(CONFUCIUS:) What do you mean, just sit and forget?
(YAN HUI:) I let organs and members drop away, dismiss eye sight and hearing, part from the body and expel knowledge, and merge with the universal thoroughfare. This is what I mean by “just sit and forget.”43
To let “organs and members drop away” (duo zhi ti 墮肢體) means to lose visceral awareness of the emotions and desires, which, for the early Daoists, have “physiological” bases in the various organs.44 To “dismiss eyesight and hearing” (chu cong ming 黜聰明) means to deliberately cut off sense perception. To “part from the body and expel knowledge” (li xing qu zhi 離形去知) means to lose bodily awareness and remove all thoughts from consciousness. To “merge with the universal thoroughfare” (tong yu datong 同於大通) seems to imply that, as a result of these practices, Yan Hui has become united with the Dao.45
The locus classicus for these apophatic practices is the “Inward Training” essay from the Guanzi, which I date to the second half of the fourth century BCE. Herein such practices are metaphorically referred to as “cleaning out the abode of the numinous mind” (shen 神). The numinous mind refers to an elusive and profound level of awareness that comes and goes within consciousness. It has its own unique physiological substrate, its “vital essence” (jing 精), and its presence confers a psychological clarity and centeredness.46 Elsewhere in the text, these apophatic practices are linked to a guided breathing meditation that involves sitting with the body erect and the limbs squared and stable and refining the vital breath (qi).47 It is through the refinement of the vital breath that emotions and desires are stilled, sense perception is restricted, the attention is unified and the mind is concentrated, and experiences of increased tranquility are produced through which one gradually reaches the deepest levels wherein the Way is attained.48 This breathing practice is spoken of metaphorically in the following passage:
For all to practice this Way:
You must coil, you must contract,
You must uncoil, you must expand,
You must be firm, you must be regular in this practice.
Maintain this excellent practice; do not let go of it.
Chase away excessive perception;
Abandon trivial thoughts.
And when you reach the ultimate limit (ji 極)
You will return to the Way and its Inner Power (De 德).49
In this passage, I interpret coiling/contracting to refer to the activity of exhalation in the breathing cycle and uncoiling/expanding to refer to the activity of inhalation. It is also important to note here the occurrence of the foundational pairing of the Way and its Inner Power (Dao and De). In this fourth-century BC text, its use predates all extant recensions of the Laozi and suggests that “Inward Training” may very well be closely connected to it. It also demonstrates a concrete link between the apophatic breathing practice of “Inward Training” and the attainment of a profound level of experience at which one is in touch with the Way and its Inner Power.
This general type of apophatic prescription and result is also found elsewhere in the “inner” Zhuangzi50 and in other textual sources for early Daoism, including the Daoist essays of the Lüshi chunqiu, later chapters of the Zhuangzi, the inner cultivation essays of the Guanzi, and the Huainanzi, as I have discussed in chapter 2 of the present volume (for a summary, see Table 2.1).51 Therein I identified a rhetorical structure of mystical praxis in early Daoism that has the following tripartite structure:
1.Preamble in which a variety of apophatic practices are listed that prepare the adept for the later stages of meditative experience. Typically, these feature various prescriptions for removing the normal contents of the mind: sense perception, desire, the emotions, knowledge and scheming, wisdom and precedent.
2.A Sorites-style argument (if x then y, if y, then z …) in which consecutive stages of meditative experience are presented. These include alignment of the body and breathing (zheng 正), tranquility (jing 靜), equanimity (ping 平 or jun 均), being unadorned (su 素), being concentrated or purified (jing 精), being clear or lucid (ming 明), having a numinous awareness (shen 神), and, finally, attaining the One or the empty Way, (de yi 得一, de xu Dao 得虛道), or becoming completely empty (xu 虛). These practices in the preamble and their results in the sorites section correspond, in general, with the basic deconstructive processes and results of mystical praxis that are enumerated by Brown.52
3.A Denouement in which the practical benefits of the first two parts are enumerated. These include instantaneous accurate cognition (jian zhi bu huo 見知不惑), spontaneous responsiveness to things (ying wu bianhua 應物便化), being able to return to the Unhewn (gui yu pu 歸於樸), having perception in which nothing is unperceived (shi wu bujian 視無不見), and taking no action and yet leaving nothing undone (wuwei er wu buwei 無為而無不為).
Examining this rhetorical structure from the standpoint of mysticism theory, we can see that the first part corresponds with the concept of mystical techniques, the second part with that of introvertive mystical experience, and the third part with that of extrovertive mystical experience, or, at least, with a discussion of the unique mode of cognition and action associated with it. I make use of these three related categories to guide my analysis of mystical praxis in the Laozi.
MYSTICAL TECHNIQUES IN THE LAOZI
The discussion of mystical techniques in the Laozi should begin with the second line of chapter 10, which talks of refining the vital breath and parallels material in “Inward Training,” but I postpone analysis of this line until the end of the article, when I can do a comprehensive analysis of the whole passage.
The first aspect of apophatic practice in early Daoism that is usually presented in our sources is to reduce to a minimum or entirely eliminate sense perception. We have evidence of such a practice and advice related to it in several passages in the Laozi. In chapter 52 we read:
Block your openings
Shut your doors,
And to the end of your life you will not run dry.
Unblock your openings,
Increase your striving,
And to the end of your life you will never get what you seek …
This is echoed in chapter 56:
Block your openings,
Shut your doors.
Blunt your sharpness,
Untangle your knots.
Blend into your brightness,
Merge with your dust.
This is called the “profound merging.”
Therefore,
You can neither get close to it nor stay away from it.
You can neither help it nor harm it.
You can neither honor it nor debase it.
Therefore it is honored by all under Heaven.
The openings and doors refer to the sense apertures.53 Both passages suggest the beneficial effects of the limitation or removal of sense perception.54 Chapter 56 moves beyond sense perception and makes a broader reference to other aspects of apophatic practice. I take “blunting sharpness” to refer to setting aside clear-cut perceptual and conceptual categories and “untangling knots” to refer to removing attachments to various aspects of the self. The next two lines speak metaphorically of merging with two contrasting qualities, darkness and light, which are perhaps symbolic of the emotional moods of the self.
Overall, this process is called “profound merging” (xuantong 玄同), another challenging technical metaphor used by the Laozi authors. The use of the term “profound,” which is a characteristic of the Way in chapter 1, seems to suggest that this process leads to a merging or union with the Way itself, a foundational introvertive mystical experience that I discuss further in the next section. This interpretation is further supported by the phrase “merge with the Universal Thoroughfare” (tong yu datong) from the sitting and forgetting passage in Zhuangzi. The conclusion to Laozi 56 provides more evidence for such an interpretation. It suggests that “profound merging” is something that cannot be approached through dualistic categories or activities, but only through their removal. This is why it is valued by all under Heaven.
Chapter 12 also makes reference to limiting the sense desires and gives an explanation of why this is needed:
The five colors blind one’s eyes;
The five notes deafen one’s ears;
The five flavors damage the palate;
Galloping on horseback and hunting madden the mind;
Hard to obtain goods hinder one’s progress.
For this reason, the sage is for the belly, not for the eye.
Therefore he discards that and takes up this.
The activities of the senses, riding and hunting, and the pursuit of material goods all seem to reinforce attachment to the individual self and also prevent it from being centered. They must be set aside if one is to make any kind of progress in inner cultivation. In this context, being “for the belly, not for the eye” would seem to refer to restricting sense perception by focusing on the regular circulation of the breath, which is centered in the belly. This is a well-known meditative technique in many traditions.55 According to Brown, with “sense-withdrawal,” the meditator “learns to disengage from external reality and the impact of sense objects so as to bring awareness carefully to bear on the stream of consciousness.”56 As a result, an increasing inner concentration develops. Furthermore, the belly is the location of the famous lower “cinnabar field” (dantian 丹田), so central in later Daoist meditation as the place where the One resides, where the vital essence accumulates, and where the practitioner must focus attention in order to eliminate desires and emotions.57 While anachronistic for our purposes, this theory could have emerged from such early breathing practices.
A further rationale for restricting sense perception comes from the theories of the Inner Cultivation tradition. As already mentioned, in these sources, the vital essence (jing) is associated with tranquility and with the numinous mind as their “physiological” substrate. It is also a source of health and vitality in the organism. It is therefore extremely important not to waste this vital essence. However, it is normally consumed during the everyday activities of sense perception, which are enhanced by its presence. As the Huainanzi says:
When the vital essence flows into the eyes then vision is clear.
When it resides in the ears then hearing is acute.
When it rests in the mouth then speech is appropriate.
When it is collected in the mind then thinking comprehends.
Therefore if you block these four gateways
Then one’s person will suffer no calamities.
The hundred joints will not be sickly,
Will not die, will not be born,
Will not be empty, will not be full.
We call (those who can do) this “the Genuine” (zhen ren 真人).58
If one can retain the vital essence, one can also retain the inner tranquility and numinous mind with which it occurs. This is a further reason to restrict sense perception.
To this point we have seen references to the removal of sense perceptions, desires, emotions, attachment to selfish concerns, and conceptual categories in the Laozi. There are further references to the removal of various aspects of thought. First, we have the famous prescription in chapter 19: “Eliminate sageliness, discard knowledge, and the people will benefit a hundred fold.” This is similar to such phrases as to “cast off wisdom and precedent” (qu zhi yu gu 去智與故), which is commonly found in inner cultivation sources.59 This chapter ends in the three appended statements:
Manifest the Unadorned and embrace the Unhewn.
Reduce self-interest and lessen desires.
Eliminate learning and have no worries.60
This passage restates the need to move past self-interest, desire, and learning, which, as we have seen above, is inherent to early Daoist apophatic practice. The latter connects with the famous passage in chapter 48 about losing accumulated learning in order to cultivate the Way. We also find here two technical terms, the “Unadorned” (su) and the “Unhewn” (pu), which seem to refer to states of mind that would have been well understood in the community of inner cultivation practitioners that produced the Laozi. Our analysis of these terms takes us into the next section on mystical praxis in the Laozi.
INTROVERTIVE MYSTICAL EXPERIENCE IN THE LAOZI: THE PROFOUND MERGING
In the context of mystical praxis that I have been developing, I would argue that both the Unadorned and the Unhewn refer to states of mind that arise from apophatic practice. In Laozi 19, the Unadorned is associated with selflessness. In the Huang-Lao boshu 黃老帛書, it refers to a meditative state that arises after tranquility and equanimity and precedes the refined state of inner concentration that is linked to the vital essence (see Table 4.1). In Laozi 19, the Unhewn is linked with having few desires. In chapter 28, the Unhewn appears as an undifferentiated state attained through being like a valley and developing constant Inner Power (De). In chapter 37, it is referred to as “nameless” and free from desire, and it is said that this desireless state is brought about through tranquility. As technical terms of meditation, it is difficult to know for certain what their meanings are. However, what we can say is that both arise from the cultivation of tranquility and stand in the spectrum of stages of introvertive meditation bounded by two other important technical terms in the Laozi, tranquility (jing) and emptiness (xu). Chapter 16 presents them both:
Complete emptiness is the ultimate limit (ji).
Maintaining tranquility is the central (practice).
The myriad things arise side-by-side
And by this I contemplate their return.
Heaven makes things in great numbers.
Each one returns to its root.
This is called “tranquility.”
Tranquility: this means returning to the inevitable (ming 命).
To return to the inevitable is a constant.
To know this constant is to be lucid.
Not to know this constant is to be confused.
If you are confused you will create misfortune.
To know this constant is to be detached.
To be detached is to be impartial.
To be impartial is to be kingly.
To be kingly is to be with Heaven.
To be with Heaven is to be with the Way.
If you are with the Way, to the end of your days you will suffer no peril.61
The statement that “complete emptiness is the ultimate limit” fits well with the fact that emptiness appears as the penultimate meditative state in several of our early Daoist sources, as can be seen in Table 4.1. So, too, does the emphasis on maintaining tranquility, which develops directly from apophatic practice at an earlier level, just following the alignment of the body and breathing.
These two terms frame a series of meditative stages in early Daoist praxis that include the Unadorned and the Unhewn. Given its nameless, desireless, and undifferentiated characteristics (all adjectives applied also to the Way), the latter term seems to refer to the unitive consciousness attained by merging with the Way.
As for the remainder of this chapter, whereas many commentators—starting with Wang Bi—see this as referring to the production of the things of the phenomenal world, in the context of the opening lines on emptiness and tranquility, I would argue that it is a phenomenological description of how one observes the arising and passing away of the contents of consciousness during guided breathing meditation. Accordingly, the myriad thoughts, emotions, and perceptions are metaphorically spoken of as the things that Heaven makes. Just as inevitably as these things arise while one is sitting in meditation, they pass away and out of consciousness. As one deepens this practice, when all these contents disappear and no longer recur, one returns to a condition of tranquility. This proceeds through a series of stages of increasing profundity until one reaches an ultimate level at which one is utterly empty.
If one knows about this inevitable process, one will realize that the variegated contents of the stream of consciousness are transient, and one can become detached from them. This lack of attachment confers the ability to be impartial in everyday interactions, as even the opinions and preferences of the individual self are also seen to be transient. This impartiality is the human counterpart of the dispassionate objectivity of Heaven, which “treats the myriad things as straw dogs” (chapter 5) and an important aspect of the desireless Way (chapter 37). It is a quality of mind the Laozi authors see as critical to cultivate in the ruler, and I have more to say about it in the following section on extrovertive mystical experience. Following the apophatic practice of the Laozi authors will produce it.
Chapter 16 also appears to be connected to the coiling and uncoiling passage from “Inward Training” through the concepts of reaching the ultimate limit (ji) of apophatic practice and returning to the Way found in both. The coiling and uncoiling of breathing meditation yield a profound tranquility, which, at its ultimate level, results in complete emptiness. In complete emptiness, one returns to the Way. Moreover, as we have seen, the attainment of, first, tranquility, and then emptiness through apophatic practice is found in the Lüshi chunqiu 25, Zhuangzi 23, and Guanzi “Techniques of the Mind I” (“Xinshu shang” 心術上) meditation passages summarized in Table 4.1. Indeed, in the last passage, the ultimate result is “to attain the empty Way” (de xu Dao). Finally, in Zhuangzi’s “fasting of the mind” passage, the attainment of emptiness through apophatic practice leads directly to merging with the Way: “It is only that the Way coalesces in emptiness. Emptiness is the fasting of the mind.”62 All these passages provide a fuller context from which to interpret Laozi 16.
The cultivation of this state of emptiness is highly prized by the authors of the Laozi. This valuation results in some of the most famous images of the text: the nothingness at the hub of the wheel, inside the clay vessel, and within the empty room in chapter 11; the empty Way that use cannot drain in chapter 4 (chong 沖; not xu 虛; this image is repeated in chapter 35, where the emptiness of the Way is implied by the recurrence of this non-draining metaphor, and in chapter 45, where the Way is implied by the emptiness and non-draining metaphor from chapter 4); the empty space between Heaven and Earth that is never exhausted in chapter 5; the spirit of the empty valley that use will never drain in chapter 6, the empty ravine and valley in chapter 28 and the expansive valley in chapter 15; and, the blank mind of the fool in chapter 20.
Furthermore, tranquility, the “central practice” and the root to which all things inevitably return from chapter 16, is repeatedly emphasized in the text. The prescription to hold fast to the center (shou zhong 守中) in chapter 5 seems to refer to this “central practice” (zhong 中) of tranquility (chapter 16). In chapter 37, we read that “if one ceases to desire by being tranquil, all under Heaven will settle of its own accord.” Chapter 45 states that “if one is clear and tranquil, one can set all under Heaven aright.” Chapter 61 states that the feminine overcomes the masculine through tranquility. Both emptiness and tranquility are central to the metaphorical description of the ancient skilled practitioners of the Way in chapter 15:
The ancients who excelled at manifesting the Way:
Were subtle and marvelous, profound and penetrating,
So deep they could not be conceived of.
It is only because they could not be conceived of that if I
were forced to describe them I would say they were:
Tentative, as if fording a stream in winter.
Hesitant, as if in fear of being surrounded.
Solemn, as if someone’s guest.
Melting, like thawing ice.
Undifferentiated, like the Unhewn.
Murky, like muddy water.
Vast, like a valley.
When muddy water is made tranquil, it gradually becomes clear.
When the calm is made active, it gradually springs to life.
Those who maintain this Way do not wish to become full.
It is only because they do not wish to become full that they can wear out yet be complete.63
The apophatic practice of breathing meditation is the process through which the normal contents of the self become emptied out and the murky consciousness gradually becomes clear. Tranquility, the Unadorned, emptiness, the Unhewn, and the “profound merging,” all discussed above, are technical terms that refer to various stages in the process of introvertive meditation leading to the experience of union with the Way. The attainment of the state in which all normal conscious contents are emptied out would certainly qualify as an “introvertive mystical experience” for Stace and a “Pure Consciousness Event” for Forman. Yet, for the Laozi authors, as we begin to see in chapter 15, when completely calm, one can still return to activity. The sages who do so maintain a clear and empty mind and detachment from the self that present few clearly defined characteristics to others. Hence they can only be described metaphorically. This, then, leads us to our third and final category of mystical praxis in the Laozi.
EXTROVERTIVE MYSTICAL EXPERIENCE IN THE LAOZI: HOLDING FAST TO THE ONE
This detachment from self spoken of in chapter 15 is also mentioned in chapter 7, where the sage’s lack of self-interest (wusi 無私) parallels that of Heaven and Earth and confers longevity, and in chapter 19, where lack of self-interest is called “manifesting the Unadorned” (xian su 見素). It is an integral part of the Laozi’s unitive expression of extrovertive mystical experience that places a strong emphasis not on some unitive conscious experience, but on the mode of cognition and being in the world that it confers. An excellent place to begin examining it is chapter 48:
Those who cultivate learning gain something every day.
Those who cultivate the Way lose something every day.
They lose and further lose until they arrive at the point of taking no deliberate action.
They take no deliberate action and yet nothing is left undone …
This saying is a succinct summary of apophatic practice, which can be thought of as the systematic loss of thoughts, feelings, perceptions, and, eventually, the self. Deliberate action comes from the biased perspective of the individual self. When this perspective is eliminated through apophatic practice, one still acts, but from a different center. While there are no passages that explicitly identify this new center for nondeliberate action, we can identify it through the famous phrase wuwei er wu buwei. For not only is this a mode of acting that develops as the result of apophatic practice, but it also is the mode of acting of the Way. Chapter 37 begins with the sentence “The Way constantly takes no deliberate action and yet nothing is left undone.” Thus the sage, when completely empty, acts precisely as the Way acts. This suggests that the sage has become one with the Way and provides further support for our interpretation of the “profound merging” in chapter 56.
The table of early Daoist meditative stages in Table 4.1 shows a similar pattern to Laozi 48. The wuwei phrase—or some variation of it—is the result of apophatic practice in each of the six passages summarized therein. I would argue that this table indicates the presence of the two basic modes of mystical experience, introvertive and extrovertive. The final stage of the introvertive mode is spoken of as becoming empty, but also as both “attaining the One” in Lüshi chunqiu “Assessing Others” and “attaining the empty Way” in Guanzi’s “Techniques of the Mind I.” The former suggests the attainment of a unitive consciousness, in other words, Stace’s introvertive mystical experience and Forman’s “Pure Consciousness Event.” The latter suggests that the “object” of this unitive consciousness is the Way, and seems to confirm LaFargue’s theory that the concept of the Way developed as the hypostatization of “the quality of mind one is cultivating internally” in the Laozi.64
The extrovertive mode of mystical experience occurs in the table as the result of the introvertive. The variations on wuwei are modes of selfless experience, experience that is extremely efficacious precisely because it is selfless. It comes from the Way and not the individual self. If this is true, we would expect that there would be some evidence in the Laozi of the retaining of some sense of the empty Way experienced at the pinnacle of introvertive mystical experience when one returns to the phenomenal world. I would assert that such evidence is found in the closely related concepts of holding on to (zhi 執), maintaining (bao 保) or holding fast to (shou 守) the Way, and embracing (bao 抱) the One.65
There are several important prescriptions to “hold on to” or “maintain the Way” in the Laozi. In chapter 14, we have the saying:
Hold on to the Way of the present
In order to manage the things of the present.
And to know the ancient beginning.
This is called the thread running through the Way.66
Chapter 15 talks of one who “maintains the Way” being first tranquil and clear, then calm and active. In chapter 32, “holding fast to the Way” results in all things spontaneously submitting to one’s rule. In chapter 52, we read of the Way as mother of all things (as in chapters 1 and 25):
All under Heaven had a beginning
And we take this to be the mother of all under Heaven.
If you attain the mother, you will know the children.
If you know the children, return to hold fast to the mother,
And to the end of your life you will never see danger.
As in chapter 14, holding fast to the Way (the mother) enables one to know intimately all things that are generated because of it (its children) because the Way continues to be their basis, as well as one’s own. Other benefits of being in touch with the Way come about because of the transformed consciousness this confers. Because of it, one is able to be selfless and desireless and to take no deliberate action and yet accomplish everything one undertakes.
Further related aspects of these benefits are explored in the other early sources of Daoist inner cultivation theory. Some examples are given in the table. According to the Huang-Lao boshu essay “Assessing,” “seeing and knowing are never deluded.” In the “Assessing Others” essay of the Lüshi chunqiu, after attaining the One, one can “respond to the alterations and transformations of things and return to the Unhewn.” In the “Numinous Essence” essay of the Huainanzi, “in seeing, nothing is left unseen, in hearing nothing is left unheard, in acting, nothing is left undone.” All of these are possible because after the “profound merging” with the Way at the pinnacle of introvertive mystical experience, one retains a sense of this unitive power when one returns to the world of the myriad things. Retaining this experience of unity upon this return is further presented in the “embracing the One” passages in the Laozi.
In chapter 22, after a description of the sage as being “bowed down then preserved” that contains further metaphors of self-yielding as opposed to self-asserting, we read:
Therefore the Sage embraces the One and is a model for all under Heaven.
He does not show himself, and so is conspicuous.
He does not consider himself right, and so is illustrious.
He does not brag and so has merit.
He does not boast and so endures …67
This means that sages can be selfless because they are able to embrace the One. Why? By retaining a sense of this unitive ground amid daily life, they have an unbiased source for their actions that is not the individual self. For Zhuangzi, in the “Essay on Seeing Things as Equal” (“Qi wu lun” 齊物論), this non–self-based orientation leads to a complete freedom from attachment to basic conceptual categories, as in the famous “three every morning” story in which the monkey keeper spontaneously adapts his feeding plan to that of the monkeys.68 For Zhuangzi, to “see all things as equal” means to regard them from this unbiased perspective of the One. Therefore, “holding fast to the One” (and its many variants) can justifiably be seen as the central descriptive metaphor in the Laozi for its understanding of what, in mysticism theory, is called the extrovertive mystical experience.
LAOZI 10 AS A SUMMARY OF MYSTICAL PRAXIS
With this understanding of mystical praxis in the Laozi, we can now return to analyze the critical chapter 10 that discusses “embracing the One” and links it with guided breathing meditation and other aspects of inner cultivation and its application to daily life:
Amidst the daily activity of the psyche,69 can you embrace the One and not depart from it?
When concentrating your vital breath until it is at its softest, can you be like a child?
Can you sweep clean your Profound Mirror so you are able to have no flaws in it?
In loving the people and governing the state, can you do it without using knowledge?
When the Gates of Heaven open and close, can you become feminine?
In clarifying all within the four directions, can you do it without using knowledge?
This passage is probably the most important evidence for guided breathing meditation in the Laozi, and it contains three close parallels to “Inward Training.” In the first line, “embracing the One” is seen as something one adheres to amid everyday psychological activities. I take this to mean talking about retaining the sense of the consciousness experienced in introvertive mystical experience when one returns to the phenomenal world. It is paralleled in “Inward Training” by the concepts of “holding on to the One” (zhi yi 執一) amid the daily transformations of things and the daily alterations of events, thus enabling the sage to “master the myriad things,”70 and of “holding fast to the One” (shou yi 守一) in the following passage:
When you broaden your mind and relax it,
Expand your vital breath and extend it,
And when your physical form is calm and unmoving:
You can hold fast to the One and discard the myriad vexations.
You will not be lured by profit,
Nor will you be frightened by harm.
Relaxed and unwound, yet acutely sensitive,
In solitude you delight in your own person.
This is called “revolving the vital breath”;
Your thoughts and deeds resemble Heaven’s.71
This passage implies that “holding fast to the One” is accomplished through guided breathing meditation. It confers a selflessness that prevents being lured by profit or frightened by harm, results similar to those in Laozi 22 for the sage who “embraces the One.” “Inward Training” contains the locus classicus for this concept of shou yi, a central tenet of the early Inner Cultivation tradition that became extremely important in the practice of meditation in later Daoist religion. There it sometimes refers to what I have called the extrovertive mystical experience of seeing unity amid the multiplicity of the phenomenal world and sometimes refers to a specific meditative technique for focusing on the One, both in sitting in silence and in the affairs of daily life.72
“Concentrating the vital breath” is a second important tenet in the Inner Cultivation tradition of early Daoism. It seems to refer to developing a refined and subtle level of breathing in introvertive meditation. Once again, its locus classicus in the extant literature is in “Inward Training”:
By concentrating your vital breath as if numinous,
The myriad things will all be contained within you.
Can you concentrate? Can you unify?
Can you not resort to divination yet know bad and good fortune?
Can you stop? Can you halt?
Can you not seek it in others,
But attain it within yourself?
You think and think and think further about this.
You think, yet still do not penetrate it.
The daemonic and numinous in you will penetrate it.
It is not due to the inherent power of the daemonic and numinous.
But rather to the utmost refinement of your essential vital breath.
When the four limbs are set squarely
And the blood and vital breath are tranquil:
Unify your awareness, concentrate your mind.
Then your eyes and ears will not be overstimulated.
Then even the far-off will seem close at hand.73
When one sits in a stable posture and practices a form of guided breathing meditation, one becomes increasingly tranquil and the breathing becomes concentrated and subtle. This leads to a well-focused mind, minimal perception of the external world, and a numinous awareness in which “the myriad things will all be contained within you.” This sounds very much like the attainment of a unitive consciousness. Retaining it when one returns to interact with the phenomenal world results in the lack of self-consciousness possessed by the child in the second line of Laozi 10.
In the third line of this chapter, we encounter the phrase “sweep clean your Profound Mirror” (ti chu xuanjian 滌除玄鑒), an abstruse meditational metaphor that Lau interprets as “cleaning out the mind.”74 This phrase is extremely close in meaning to one of the most important metaphors for apophatic practice in the Inner Cultivation tradition, which is first found in “Inward Training”:
There is a numinous awareness that naturally lies within.
One moment it goes, the next it comes,
And no one is able to conceive of it.
If you lose it you are inevitably disordered;
If you attain it you are inevitably well-ordered.
Reverently clean out its abode (the mind)
And its vital essence will come on its own.
Still your attempts to imagine and conceive of it.
Relax your efforts to reflect on and control it.
Be serious and reverent and its vital essence will naturally settle.
Grasp it and don’t let go,
Then the eyes and ears will not be overstimulated,
And the mind will have no other focus.
When a properly aligned mind lies within your center,
The myriad things will be seen in their proper context.75
To “reverently clean out the abode” of the numinous awareness shares the syntax and key verb (chu 除) of Laozi 10’s “sweep clean your Profound Mirror.” The metaphor is repeated in the related Guanzi essay “Techniques of the Mind I,” where emptying the mind of desires is synonymous with “sweeping clean” (saochu 掃除) the abode of the numinous awareness.76 The “Inward Training” verse seems to imply that the cleaning process involves setting aside the attempt to conceive of or control the numinous awareness. Then the mind will be ordered and concentrated on an inner meditation that allows the “myriad things to be seen in their proper context,” a rather vague phrase that perhaps parallels the “myriad things will all be contained within you” from the previous passage.
The presence of all three parallels between Laozi 10 and “Inward Training” provides further evidence that the two works are closely related. I would hypothesize that the lineages of practitioners that produced each work shared a common apophatic meditative practice but, because of perhaps regional traditions and the particular experiences of individual teachers, developed somewhat different metaphors for conceiving of their practice and its results.
Conclusion
When taken together, these passages provide important testimony to the presence of mystical praxis in the Laozi. They further indicate that the Laozi is not an isolated product but was part of a greater tradition of lineages that shared a common meditative practice as their basis. Furthermore, this practice, as much as we can tell from the surviving textual evidence, is similar to apophatic meditative practice in many other cultural and religious traditions. This practice also yields both introvertive and extrovertive mystical experiences that seem to be similar to those in other traditions; I have made no attempt here to claim that these experiences are identical. What I have claimed is that these experiences are the likely basis of the distinctive cosmology and political theory of sage rulership for which the Laozi is renowned.
I wish to express my gratitude to Angus Graham and Robin Yates for their careful reading and searching criticisms of earlier versions of this manuscript. I wish also to thank Margaret Taylor for her most helpful editorial suggestions.