This idea that one's integrity depended on following every impulse did not expire with the Seven Sages. Wang Hui-chih, who lived a century later, awoke one night to find that it had snowed. Getting out of bed, he began to pace up and down his room, and to recite poems about paying visits to hermits. This reminded him of Tai K'uei. He dressed, took a boat, and started down the shore. Tai K'uei lived far off and it was not until dawn that he reached his house. But just as he was about to knock on his door, he turned and went home. Someone who found out what had happened asked him why. Wang Hui-chih said: "I came on the impulse, and when the impulse ended, I returned. Why had I to see Tai?"
Not merely impulsiveness, but sensitivity characterized feng liu — in particular, sensitivity to the beauty of nature. When one of the school gazed out from a mountain top in Shantung, he wept and said of himself: "Wang Po-yu of Lang-ya must in the end die of his emotions." *
There is little in the writings of the Pure Conversationalists to connect them with other currents of the Taoist movement. Philosophical Taoism, which they exemplified, was a stream apart, as I have indicated. Obviously they did not belong to the Interior Gods hygiene
* For this and much of the other material in section 5, I am indebted to Fung Yu-lan's Short History of Chinese Philosophy.
school since they beHeved that wine, far from offending interior gods, brought one closer to Tao. To my knowledge none of them joined the Taoist church. It is true that Chi K'ang is sometimes called an alchemist. In later sources there are stories of his searching the forest for dietary herbs and apprenticing himself to mysterious hermits. But to me, at least, serious hygiene simply does not jibe with the impulsiveness and the lyrical acceptance of nature that distinguishes the Seven Sages from their other Taoist contemporaries. They are the heirs of —^and in a sense our guarantee of—the original purity of Lao Tzu and Chuang Tzu.
6. Ko Hung
The Taoist movement was always a mixture. Every element in that mixture had something in common with every other element, but nothing in common with all the other elements. Alchemy, hygiene, philosophical Taoism, and the Taoist church—these were now the elements. The pursuit of immortality, the use of the Tao Te Ching as a fundamental text, the Taoist pantheon, and an individualistic revolt against the demands of society—these were the features they most often had in common. But the Taoist movement was never unified. The mixture never became a compound.
The closest approach to unification was made by the eclectics of the Six Dynasties. Among them Ko Hung is perhaps the most important. He dabbled in almost every school of Taoism. Primarily, however, he is thought of as an alchemist. Before discussing his activities we must therefore retrace our steps a little and see what had happened to alchemy since we left it in 56 b.c.^
Our best source is the Ts'an T'ung Ch'i, a book compiled about 140 A.D. by one Wei Po-yang. It is the oldest surviving text on alchemy in East or West.^ In cryptic terms it tells how to prepare the elixir called "returned cinnabar" {huan tan) by heating the Dragon (lead) and Tiger (mercury) through twelve cycles. It recommends eating metallic gold on the basis that gold is incorruptible and those who eat it will become so too. It mentions an elixir which, when swallowed,
'See p. 105.
' Unless, as Mr. Waley has suggested, its alchemical passages were all added towards the middle of the fourth century a.d.
"spreads foggily like wind-driven rain. Vaporizing and permeating, it reaches the four limbs. Thereupon the complexion becomes rejuvenated, hoary hair regains its blackness, and new teeth grow where fallen ones used to be. . . . Such transformations make one immune from worldly miseries and one who is so transformed is called by the name of Realized Man." ^
Besides formulas for the elixir the Ts'an Tung Ch'i offers a curious mixture of philosophical Taoism and hygiene. It refers to the study of Huang-Lao as the foundation of the alchemist's art. Much of its phraseology echoes the Tao Te Ching. It recommends trance meditation and circulation of breath "from head to toe." It promises not only immortality, but magic powers to anyone who eats the elixir: he will become a hsien, immune to fire and water, able to appear and disappear at will, happy forever. When his time comes, T'ai I will raise him up to become a heavenly official.
What a pity that Wei Po-yang makes his recipes so cryptic! He tells us himself we must read them ten thousand times to see what he is driving at—an odd avowal from an author who has said a few paragraphs above that he wrote his book because he was grieved by the officials, farmers, and merchants who had abandoned their work and ruined their Hves trying to figure out old discourses on alchemy.
Now we return to Ko Hung, the Six Dynasties eclectic.
In 317 A.D., about two centuries after the composition of the Ts'an T'ung Ch'i, he finished his monumental work, the Pao P'u Tzu. This was a kind of encyclopaedia on the art of becoming a hsien, in which he cited all the texts and incorporated all the ideas he could lay his hands on. That may explain why it is so full of contradictions. For example, in one passage he denies that the worship of gods is effective in the pursuit of immortality. But in other passages he says that sacrifices to T'ai I, Lao Tzu, the Great Dipper, the God of the Stove, etc., are essential for the successful preparation of the elixir, and he gives a recipe for getting Ssu-ming, the Director of Destiny, to remove one's name from the book of death. Contradictions like this one make it hard to say what Ko Hung's attitude was towards the various schools in which he dabbled. He gives several formulas for killing the Three Worms who, according to the Interior Gods hygiene school, resided in the body's vital centers. He recommends avoiding garlic, mustard,
"Ts'an T'ung Ch'i, XXVII (sec Bibliography).
and so forth for one hundred days before an alchemical experiment. He considers sexual hygiene essential to the quest of immortality. "The most important thing is to return the semen to repair the brain," ^ All this might lead us to suppose that Ko Hung had accepted the doctrine of pleasing the Interior Gods. But as to avoiding cereal foods—one of the first ways to please them—he is equivocal. In one passage he seems to say that eating the five grains actually promotes longevity. In another passage he pooh-poohs grain avoidance as something that does not confer longevity, but merely cuts down on the cost of food. His teacher, Chang, ate the five grains like an ordinary man. As to abstinence from wine, not only did his teacher drink it, but his teacher's teacher, Ko Hsiian, is the man who, when very drunk or in the summer heat, used to spend the day at the bottom of a pond.
Ko Hung seems to be aware of church Taoism, which was just then developing the doctrines of the Ling-Pao gods,^ for he states that one powerful drug, the "stone mushroom," can only be found by those who carry the five Ling-Pao charms for entering a mountain. Before setting out they must pray together at a chiao in which wine and dried meat are sacrificed to the mushroom. On the other hand, Ko Hung is very suspicious of priests or tao shih, who often pretend to be hsien when they are not and who victimize the public with false teachings.
Ko Hung divides hsien into three classes, depending on which elixir they take and what regime they have followed. The highest class are those who have taken elixirs like gold or jade and done twelve hundred good deeds: thereupon they mount to Heaven in broad daylight. Rather than mounting at once, however, such a man may prefer to stay in the world teaching Confucianism {sic) to the ordinary folk and alchemy to initiates. In contrast to him, a second class hsien has not the talent to save both others and himself: he must disregard human affairs and devote himself only to hygiene. Ko Hung himself, far from being a hermit, held important military and civil posts both while he was writing the Pao P'u Tzu and afterwards. So both in his teachings and his life he followed the line of Wang Pi and Kuo Hsiang, the Neo-Taoists who wanted to make Taoism a philosophy for men of affairs.
*Pao P'u Tzu. VIII (66, see Bibliography). ^See pp. 136-137.
It is interesting that Ko Hung, like these Neo-Taoists, preferred Confucius to Lao Tzu and Chuang Tzu. Confucius, at least, had taken no stand on immortality, whereas Lao Tzu and Chuang Tzu had positively rejected the idea, the one by implication, the other outright. That is why Ko Hung considered the Tao Te Ching too vague and said that Chuang Tzu, because he "equalized life and death," was "millions of miles away from ^j/>«ship." ®
Ko Hung was even called "famous for his Confucian learning." It is a sad comment on the state of Confucianism in the Six Dynasties that this was said of a man who believed that almost anything could be accomplished by taking a pill. The Pao P'u Tzu not only asserts that elixirs are the one avenue to immortality—in contrast to herbs, breathing, gymnastics, and sexual hygiene, which merely prolong life'' —^but also that eating them confers a whole new set of fascinating magic powers.
•Besides the old-fashioned powers, like being immune to fire and water, able to disappear at will, assume any shape one desires, and ride the clouds, Ko Hung has a recipe for walking on water; another for raising the dead (if they have not been dead more than three days); another for attracting the company of spirits and Jade Maidens. Then there are pills which outrun the imagination of even the most sanguine enthusiast for our modern science of chemistry. One such is for the use of army officers: as soon as they eat it, the enemy's troops set to fighting amongst themselves. Another pill enables the lowly bureaucrat to get any civil service rank he desires. Another (oh, that Western students of Chinese could lay hold of a few!) makes it possible to read 10,000 characters in a day and remember them all. And there is a pill by carrying which one waterproofs one's clothes. The odd thing is that with all these marvelous powers in prospect, those who were training to become hsien had to be very careful of themselves. Ko Hung advises them "not to run rapidly, to put on clothes before they feel cold . . . and not to expose themselves to . . . thick mist."®
Ko Hung says that he was never able to prepare the elixir himself. He could not scrape together enough money to buy the necessary raw
'Pao P'u Tzu VIII (69). Here is evidence of the continuing breach between philosophical Taoism and the cult of hsien.
'Sometimes he says that these practices are necessary adjuncts to the elixir; sometimes that the elixir alone is enough.
'Pao P'u Tzu. XIII (175).
materials. It is rather consoling, therefore, to learn that at eighty-one he achieved "Liberation from the Corpse" and became a hsien (third-class). Thus he capped a career which, as the reader can see, was marked by catholicity even at the expense of consistency.
7. After the Fourth Century: Alchemy and Hygiene
From the beginnings of the Taoist movement in the fourth century B.C. to the death of Ko Hung in the fourth century a.d., we have covered a period of seven hundred years. It is nearly twice as long from Ko Hung's death until today. If we continued our account in the same detail, I am afraid it would be interminable. Let us therefore restrict it from this point on to the salient developments. We shall consider them under four headings: alchemy and hygiene; the pantheon; the church; and philosophical Taoism.
In hygiene the school of Interior Gods declined. By the end of the Six Dynasties collective worship and a change in the character of the Taoist pantheon, which we shall discuss below, had exteriorized the gods. It became unnatural to imagine them in residence inside the body. Soon afterwards there was another shift. About the middle of the T'ang, the practice of circulating the "exterior breath" (the air we breathe) gave way to the circulation of the "interior breath" {nei ch'i). The latter was a kind of vital energy drawn from the ether as air is drawn from the atmosphere. To fill the Lower Field of Cinnabar with nei ch'i, to circulate it through the body, and to stop it from leaking out became the aim of the adept. He continued to strive for regularity of respiration, but not to hold his breath for such extended periods. The development is easy to understand. Over the preceding centuries too many Taoists attempting to hold their breath for one to three hours must have come closer to Immortality than they expected. The new practice involved neither the difficulties nor the hazards of the old.^ It is still in use.
There were parallel developments in alchemy. No one could expect even of the devout that they would continue to abstain from meat, bread, and rice in favour of a diet of metallic poisons. As early as the writings of Hui Ssu (515-577) we find mention of the "interior elixir"
Though it did involve the effort of constandy wiggling one's toes while walking in order to "make the breath descend below."
{nei tan). By the end of the eleventh century the idea was widely accepted. One of its chief proponents was Chang Po-tuan (983-1082), who seems to have been as much of a Ch'an Buddhist as a Taoist. In 1078 A.D. he completed his Wu Chen P'ien, or Essay on Awaf^ening to the Truth? Its meaning is hidden in luxuriant and exasperating symbolism. This much, however, is clear. The "interior elixir" is not to be prepared in a clay furnace with charcoal and bellows, but inside the alchemist's body. The ingredients are to be "true lead" and "true mercury," not the "vulgar" materials. True lead means the essence of yang, and true mercury the essence of yin. Yin is to be captured and wholly absorbed by yang; this is their "marriage." But what are the essences of yin and yang? One commentary says that yang is the real and yin the unreal. Lying on his couch just after midnight and/or just after the winter solstice, the alchemist marries these essences in his stomach under the influence of ch'i and gives birth to an embryo. Next morning the embryo or "mysterious pearl" is visible and it grows as the yang grows. Eventually the alchemist becomes a hsien, immune to tiger and rhinoceros, fire and sword.
I am not sure what this is all about. Evidently the embryo is the embryo of a new self, which is actually one's original self. This new self is not physically immortal (in I, 2; 11, 51, 62, 64 we see that Chang puts little stock in physical immortality). Rather, it is immortal because it is Enlightened, because it sees no distinction between subject and object, between the individual and God. Thus the text says that the elixir enables the alchemist to "return to the origin (I, 9) ... Returning to the origin . . . means imperishable" (II, 51). One commentator remarks that the elixir "makes all things fuse into one and return to T'ai Chi (the Grand Ultimate)." This non-physical approach to immortality is in line with Chang's admiration for Lao Tzu and his belittling of conventional hygiene. "Even if you practice breathing for years," he asks, "how can you make the golden crow {yang) capture the rabbit {yin) ?" (II, 40: and cf. I, 9, 15).
It was many centuries before this meditative alchemy wholly displaced the alchemy of pots and pills. Su Tung-p'o, the great poet and painter, who lived from 1036 to 1101 and was hence a contemporary of Chang Po-tuan, practiced both kinds of alchemy, as well as Taoist
'There is a rather unsatisfactory English translation by Chao Yiin-ts'ung, in the Proceedings of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, Vol. 73, No. 5 (July, 1939).
hygiene. He controlled his breathing, swallowed his saliva and concentrated on the tip of his nose. He had a furnace set up in his lodgings for experiments with cinnabar. At the same time he wrote books on interior alchemy. He considered the heart yang and the genitals yin. Just as lead must capture mercury, so the fire of the purer emotions in the heart must overcome the waters of venery below. In this way both essences are conserved. As Mr. Waley puts it, alchemy gradually became "a system of mental and physical re-education." ^
Because the new hygiene of "interior breath" and the new alchemy of the "interior elixir" were both adopted by the same schools of Taoism, the two disciplines tended to coalesce. The result was literature like The Secret of the Golden Flower,^ which Jung has brought to the attention of Western readers, and which represents the union of alchemy, hygiene, and Ch'an Buddhism.
Today in China hygiene is still practiced. There is many an educated person who regularly lies on his side in a darkened room, eyes closed, and concentrates on a point one inch below his navel (where the Lower Field of Cinnabar was located some two thousand years ago). He slackens the tempo of respiration. By keeping his tongue arched back against the roof of his mouth he stimulates the flow of saliva which, along with some breath, he swallows. Gradually he becomes aware of a feeling of warmth at the center of concentration. He shifts this center, first in a small circle between the heart and the genitalia, then in a large circle between the feet and head. This may lead to a climax, a sense of intense euphoria which comes without warning and leaves the same way. Some hygienists avoid wine, meat, and vegetables of the onion family.
These practises are thought to increase a man's resistance to disease and to retard old age. They are not regarded as necessarily or specifically Taoist, although there can be little doubt as to their roots.
A Chinese friend of mine has parents in their seventies, both of whom take up hygiene sporadically. When they leave off, their hair turns gray: when they resume, it turns black again. My friend, who was trained as a physicist, tells me he has seen this himself. I would like to see it too.
'"Notes on Chinese Alchemy," Bulletin of the School of Oriental Studies (1930).
* Translated by R. Wilhelm with an introduction by C. J. Jung. The book is attributed to Lii Tung-pin, a T'ang Immortal, but was more probably composed in the eighteenth century.
Let me repeat that these are not practices of the illiterate masses, but of scholars and officials. Another person I know learned them some years ago from the President of Nanking University, who was eager to proselytize the students. Therefore we should not be surprised by a recent report to the effect that the Communist Chinese government has approved instruction in Taoist hygiene at a new institute in Peking. Perhaps it is part of the campaign to revitaUze traditional Chinese medicine.
This is an appropriate point to take note of two tangential features of the Taoist movement: medicine and feng shui. Feng shut ("wind-water") is geomancy, the science of selecting auspicious sites. Until the end of the nineteenth century few Chinese would think of constructing a building or a grave until they had gotten the opinion of an expert in feng shui. The expert would try to find a site that sloped to the south while it was protected from the north, with a hill on the east (wood) larger than one on the west (metal), so that the Green Dragon of Spring might prevail against the White Tiger of Autumn. Valleys were yin, but so were rounded hills—in contrast to the yang of precipitous heights. The west and north were yin. The east and south were yang. The perfect site was three-fifths yang and two-fifths yin. It was dangerous to have high structures in the immediate vicinity (Western telegraph poles were one of the causes of the Boxer Rebellion). Nearby there should be a watercourse to carry off the "earthly breaths" and leave the site bathed in the "breaths of heaven." One objective of the hygienist was to replace the earthly breaths, of which his body was composed, with the heavenly breaths that would make him immortal. Thus feng shui is a mixture of Yin-yang, the Five Elements, Taoist hygiene and other ideas. Books on geomancy are mentioned in the bibliographical section of the Former Han History by Pan Ku (32-92 a.d.). The founder of feng shui proper, however, is traditionally considered to have been Kuo P'o, a Taoist who attained Immortality about 324.
In Chinese medicine there have also been connections with Taoism. After all, what if not doctors were the early masters of hygiene and the later faith healers who established the Taoist church ? It seems fairly probable that some Chinese medical discoveries were made by those Taoists who put less emphasis on sin as the cause of disease and more emphasis on diet, gymnastics, and respiration as the cause of
health. Chinese doctors stressed the importance of ch'i. The earUest surviving medical book, the Nei Ching, which is ascribed to the Yellow Emperor (2697-2597 b.c), but which was probably written in the second or third century b.c, speaks of an "evil breath" as the origin of all disease. One reason it recommends acupuncture was to release this breath from the interior of the body. Hua T'o (died 220 a.d.) recommended gymnastics for the same purpose. He was a famous surgeon and the first to use anaesthesia. Like some of his colleagues he appears to have been a Taoist.^ Chinese medicine accepted much of the bizarre anatomy to which I have alluded above.^ In 1106 a.d. when the second"^ reported autopsy of Chinese history failed to reveal interior organs that corresponded to the Yellow Emperor's description, it was pointed out that he had been describing the organs of a Realized Man {chen jen) whereas they had dissected a bandit chief. Yet Taoism made continuing contributions to medicine, and it is easy to see why. Dietary restrictions sent hungry hygienists combing the forest for roots and herbs. Hope of discovering the elixir prompted the alchemist to grind up and eat every new variety of rock that came to his attention. A thousand years of this resulted in a simply enormous pharmacopoeia.^ We probably have a lot to learn from it.
By now the reader may see why the Taoist movement has sometimes been called the Chinese counterpart of Western science. Hygiene, alchemy, feng shut, medicine, and philosophical Taoism—but not the church—sought to explain the operation of nature in terms of impersonal law rather than to explain it in terms of a personal god (like the Christians) or simply to ignore it (like the Confucians). To a large extent the Taoists practiced experimental science. They were reluctant to alter their premises in the light of logic and experimentation, but they did at least experiment. They were ultimately responsible for the development of dyes, alloys, porcelains, medicines, the compass, and gunpowder. They would have developed much more if the best minds in
^I do not mean to imply that at any time were all doctors Taoists or vice versa. Since before the Han dynasty, the sick have had a choice. They could consult a physician who, whether he was a Taoist or not, would treat them with medication and other physical methods. Or they could consult a wu or a tao shih who would use charms and spells (to drive away demons) or ceremonies (to effect a remission of sins).
"Pp. 106-109.
'The first had been in 16 a.d.
* The Pen Ts'ao Kang Mu (sixteenth century a.d.) fills fifty-two volumes.
China had not been pre-empted by Confucian orthodoxy, which, especially after the Sung Dynasty, looked down on spatulas and herb picking as menial work unsuitable for the scholar. Confucius was once ridiculed for having practical accomplishments.^ His followers never got over it.
8. The Development of the Taoist Pantheon
As I have already pointed out, Taoism was constantly changing its celestial personnel. The earliest gods had been personifications (1) of natural forces or (2) of metaphysical concepts. T'ai I had been the latter: he represented underlying unity; the San I (Three Ones) were T'ai I plus the natural forces called Heaven and Earth; Ssu-ming was Fate. Around these gods there had gradually developed a hierarchy of immortals or hsien, that is, of human beings who had won divinity through hygiene. With the introduction of Buddhism in the first century A J)., this pantheon found itself face to face with serious competition.
The original Buddhist ideal had been the arhat, who sought salvation (nirvana) for himself alone. In the forms of Buddhism which reached China, the arhat had been largely displaced by the bodhisattva. The bodhisattva (or Buddha-to-be) was a man, who, by heroic accumulation of merit through many incarnations, reached the very threshold of Enlightenment and then paused, refusing to cross it until all mankind had crossed before him. As the ordinary man could not or would not aspire to Enlightenment itself (which seemed to mean simple extinction), the role of the bodhisattva was gradually deflected. He became a being who would help people not only towards Enlightenment, but towards satisfying their desires and avoiding dangers, as well as towards rebirth on a higher plane of existence. This was possible because of the enormous fund of merit which the bodhisattva had accumulated in previous incarnations and which he could assign to the benefit of any sentient being. In other words, he became a god of mercy.
The first reaction of the Taoists was to make the Immortals into Instructors, who taught the adept how to follow in their footsteps.
* Analects IX. 6.
Next they borrowed the idea of reincarnation and asserted that some Instructor-Immortals, Hke Lao Tzu, had repeatedly descended to the Earth to instruct the Sages. But they went even further than the Buddhists, for instead of saying that Lao Tzu had begun as a man (like a bodhisattva), they placed his birth before Heaven and Earth. His departure from Chaos was the cause of Creation. In his incarnations he was, in fact, Tao made flesh. Hence, he received the title of Tao Chiin (Lord Tao). Huang-Lao Chiin was now merely another name for Lao Tzu in his eternal aspect.
Still, the Taoists did not feel able to compete with Buddhism. Whereas Huang-Lao Chiin and the lesser Instructor-Immortals were ready to help the solitary adept in his pursuit of immortality through hygiene, they were not comparable to the gods of mercy who answered the prayers of the masses of the common people for protection and success in a time of troubles. Therefore Huang-Lao Chiin was replaced by a new kind of divinity, the T'ien Tsun, or "Celestial Honoured [Being]."
The T'ien Tsun were altogether above the human sphere. They did not begin their careers as men like a bodhisattva, nor did their avatars ever descend to earth like Huang-Lao Chiin. The greatest of them, whose name was Yuan Shih T'ien Tsun or T'ai Shih T'ien Tsun ("Celestial Honoured [Being] of the Original Beginning" or "of the Grand Beginning") formed himself spontaneously from the original Breaths before the world began. He created and ijow rules Heaven and Earth. Herein he resembles Huang-Lao Chiin.^ He is constantly occupied with salvation of all men. Herein he resembles a bodhisattva. At the beginning of each Kalpa^ he dictates the scriptures of the Ling-Pao (Sacred Jewel) to the other gods, some of whom are spontaneously formed like himself and some of whom are men who have attained immortality. They in turn transmit the Ling-Pao scriptures to mankind. These books deal with the structure of the divine hierarchy and the rites by which the layman can invoke its aid on earth and enter it himself in Heaven. The rites include those which
^ See p. 107. Though the concept of T'ien Tsun was new, the title was not. Huang-Lao Chiin had been called T'ien Tsun, perhaps in imitation of Buddha, one of whose epithets, "Bhagavad," was first translated as T'ien Tsun in Chinese.
^A Buddhist term for the period of 1,344,000 to 1,280,000,000 years between the cyclical destructions of the universe. Yiian Shih T'ien Tsun and the Ling-Pao scriptures survive such destructions.
celebrate birth and death, release one's ancestors from hell, outfit them with immortal bodies in heaven, and "remove the difficulties" confronting one in day-to-day life. Ling-Pao ceremonies were evidently somewhat calmer in character than those of the Yellow Turbans and their revivalist contemporaries.
We do not know when the transition to the Ling-Pao pantheon was either begun or completed. In 165 a.d. Lao Tzu was already being worshipped as the creator of the world. Ko Hung mentions "Ling-Pao charms" in the Pao Fu Tzu (317 a.d.) . The new pantheon was codified by the Taoist physician and hygienist T'ao Hung-ching not very long after 489 a.d. and it was made authoritative by the monk Sung Wen-ming who, in the middle sixth century, wrote commentaries on the Ling-Pao scriptures. These scriptures had allegedly been received from the gods by Chang Ling^ in purple characters on gold tablets. Maspero guesses they were actually written in the fourth and fifth centuries.
At each stage the pantheon had been capped by a triad. First there were the Three Ones, headed by T'ai I; then the Supreme Triad, headed by Huang-Lao Chiin; and now there were the Three Pure Ones headed by Yiian Shih T'ien Tsun. The identity of the other members of this last group is given differently in different sources.* But one version came to be that the other two were the "Jade Emperor" (Yii Huang) and the "Celestial Honoured [Being] of Jade Dawn and the Golden Gate" (Chin Ch'iieh Yii Ch'en T'ien Tsun). The Jade Emperor became the deputy of Yiian Shih T'ien Tsun in administering the celestial bureaucracy and governing the world. Then it was asserted that Yiian Shih T'ien Tsun, like a Sage King, had abdicated in favour of the Jade Emperor and that in due time the Jade Emperor would abdicate in favour of the last of the Three Pure Ones.^
It is uncertain when this transition took place. Steles were erected to the Jade Emperor during the Six Dynasties.^ We do know that in 1012 A.D. the Emperor Chen Tsung announced he had received an im-
*The founder of the western church. See p. 115. * Some include Lao Tzu.
' Who thereby became the counterpart of Maitreya, the Buddha of the future. "According to Maspero, Le taoisme, p. 134. According to H. H. Dubs in China (see Bibliography) he was first mentioned in the ninth century.
portant letter from the Jade Emperor and that in 1115 Hui Tsung honoured him with a temple and the title of Shang TiJ Confucian historians have asserted that these Sung rulers simply invented a nev^^ divinity to divert public attention from their difficulties with the northern barbarians. Invention or not, the Jade Emperor became the supreme deity of the common people. His predecessor, Yiian Shih T'ien Tsun, left the spotlight as T'ai I and Huang-Lao Chiin had done before him. This did not mean that people ceased to believe in their existence. Taoism, just as it accepted everything, discarded nothing. But one paid attention only to those divinities who could be helpful.
One sought help, for instance, from the God of T'ai Shan. He was the Jade Emperor's regent for the earth—and should be distinguished from another God of T'ai Shan who governed the seventh of the ten hells. Then there were the City Gods (or Gods of Moats and Walls), to whom the Jade Emperor entrusted the administration of a particular region and who were more susceptible to prayer than the "higher-ups," just as a Congressman is more likely to do us a favour than the President. Even the individual household had its divinities, the most important being our old friend, the God of the Hearth (or Stove). He kept the ledger of the good and bad deeds committed by every member of the family for monthly transmittal to the Gods of Moats and Walls and annual submission to the Jade Emperor. And this is only a small part of the vast celestial bureaucracy, which ran the gamut from deities in charge of the sun and moon to those in charge of the privy.
Once a year all the gods came to the Jade Emperor's court to pay homage and hand in accounts of their administration for the preceding twelve months. They were promoted or punished accordingly. For the gods were not so much individuals as offices. Those who filled the lower offices were usually historical human beings. If they did a poor job, they had to make room for others. Though in theory it was the Jade Emperor who promoted or punished the office-holder, in practice it was more often the Chinese government. Presumably they worked in concert. If, for instance, a rain god had refused to send rain, the appropriate government official would first read him a stiff lecture. He might point out, as Po Chii-i once did, that the god was "not divine on
^Thc most ancient and exalted word for god in Chinese.
his own accoum, it was his worshippers that made him so"; that if the drought continued, people would begin to doubt his powers, and he would "lose face"; that he too would go hungry in case of a famine, for it would be necessary to curtail the sacrifices at his temple; and so forth. If such reasonable arguments failed, the god would be threatened with loss of rank. Finally, an Imperial Decree would be issued, breaking him, let us say, from Duke to Marquis. The ceremonies necessary to solemnize such changes, especially the installation of a new god, were nearly always performed by Taoist priests who, like their Roman Catholic counterparts in the West, had a kind of monopoly on deification.
Hell too had its bureaucracy, and some of the rites of the Taoist church were designed to secure a good position there for the deceased. Hell was divided into ten departments, most of which specialized in punishing a certain type of sinner. After at least twenty-eight months in residence sinners returned to the upper world in the incarnations they deserved.
Besides Heaven and Hell there were special regions like Mt. K'un-lun, which were inhabited by the lower ranks of hsien. Eight of the latter—the Pa hsien —have beeen favourite subjects for painting and sculpture. Their identity varies. Over the hsien at Mt. K'un-lun reigns Hsi Wang Mu, an ancient goddess of the plague, who was adopted by the Taoists early in the Christian era as giver of long life and grower of the Peaches of Immortality.
Such has been the theology of Taoism from the Sung Dynasty until today. In this last phase it has become almost indistinguishable from popular Buddhist theology, except in nomenclature and minor details, and indeed it has shared with the Buddhists a whole assortment of deities, from Kuan Yin, the Goddess of Mercy, to Kuan Ti, the God of War. This has resulted in what W. T. Chan calls "the religion of the masses." Few Chinese are exclusively Buddhist or Taoist. Most of them patronize the institutions of both religions, which offer much the same thing.
The religion of the masses had its moral as well as its theological aspect. This is well illustrated by two short books usually called Taoist: the T'ai Shang Kan Ying P'ien, or the "Tractate on Actions and Retributions," and the Yin Chih Wen, or "Text on Determining [to do
good deeds] in Secret." ^ Probably composed in the eleventh century A.D., these came to be widely distributed by monasteries and by charitable societies—like Gideon Bibles in the United States. In fact, the first was described by F. H. Balfour, a nineteenth-century Sinologist, as "the most popular religious work in China." Let us examine it briefly. The Kan Ying P'ien begins by pointing out that a man's sins are regularly reported to Heaven, not only by the God of the Hearth, but by the Three Worms. (These are the malevolent creatures who figured in the Interior Gods school of hygiene^ and who reported their host's sins because they wanted to shorten his life and so escape from his body.) According to the Kan Ying P'ien, man's life is shortened by twelve years for every major sin and a hundred days for every minor sin. Those who want to live long must therefore exemplify certain virtues and avoid certain vices. If they can go so far as to perform 1,300 good deeds, they will become Celestial Immortals; for 300, only Terrestrial Immortals.^"
All this, as we can see, represents ancient Taoist traditions. But when we turn to the catalogue of virtues and vices that follows it, we find little that is specifically Taoist. Rather, there is a bland and repetitious mixture of Buddhism, Taoism, and Confucianism. Most of it could be inserted in a Christian Sunday sermon without attracting the least attention. The reader is told not to be dishonest, cruel, slanderous, boastful, or hypocritical, not to take bribes, or use short measures, or covet his neighbour's wife, or waste food, or show disrespect for elders, or damage other people's houses with fire and water, etc., etc. The Buddhist touches—not to kill animals, overturn nests, break eggs—must come as a surprise to those Westerners who have remarked on Chinese inhumanity to animals. The conclusion of the book is Confucian: if anyone dies through misfortune, disease, or early death before he has expiated the sins in his ledger, then the balance is carried forward not to the account of his own future incarnations, but to that of his descendants. Some of the book's 212 injunctions arise more from superstition than morality: one should never urinate, for instance, facing north;
* One translation of the first is by James Legge in Texts of Taoism (Sacred Books of the East, XL). The second has been translated by P. Carus and D. T. Suzuki under the title Yin Chih Wen, The Tract oj the Quiet Way, Open Court Publishing Co., 1906.
•See p. 108.
"Ko Hung gives the figures as 1,200 and 300.
nor should one spit at a shooting star. As in most such lists, the vices outnumber the virtues (here by more than ten to one).
The other book, the Yin Chih Wen, is even less specifically Taoist. It urges that the reader "impartially observe the Three Doctrines" (Buddhism, Taoism, and Confucianism). Its hst of virtues and vices reads like little more than an extract from the Kan Ying P'ien: compassion for orphans, care not to walk on worms and ants, avoidance of improper language, and so on. If we strive to do these things in secret and for no reward, either we or our posterity will be benefited. I suppose that those who have observed the Chinese care of orphans in recent decades and listened to the language of the streets would say that these two books had had very little eflect. But the same might be said of the Christian Bible during the Thirty Years' War. In any case it was books like these—not the Tao Te Ching or the more esoteric volumes of the Taoist canon—which were the Taoist reading of the masses.
9. Taoist Church Organization
When we turn to ecclesiastical organization, we find that over the last seventeen centuries it had one salient feature: there was no permanent central authority to which all church Taoists submitted. Each parish and monastery had its hierachy. In some cases a group of monasteries might submit to the leader of their particular sect of Taoism (for there have been many sects in the church), but usually the pyramid of command terminated at the Abbot. The reason for this lies in early history. At the end of the Han Dynasty, when the Chinese government suppressed the rebellions of the Yellow Turbans and their counterparts in the west, it lopped of? the tops of their hierarchies. They were never restored. At various times there was a nominal or partial restoration, but so far as I know it never affected parishes or monasteries throughout China. The Taoist church, like the Buddhist, was atomistic.
During most of the Six Dynasties the hierarchy of the individual parish was headed by the tao shih, or priest, whose office was hereditary. Under him was a small council of elders who helped him in performing ceremonies and collecting tithes. In some cases it appears the tao shih lived in the village; in others, he lived in a nearby monastery {kjuan), where, unlike his Buddhist counterpart, he could have a wife and
children. Still other tao shih wandered about the countryside with small bands of disciples. Whether they celebrated the rites of the church as itinerant priests or mainly practiced alchemy, hygiene, or magic, I do not know. During the Six Dynasties it would seem that monastic life became increasingly the rule. This was not only in imitation of the Buddhists, but also because if one lived in a monastery it was easier to undertake regular fasting and meditation, which, as we shall see, was re-emphasized in the middle of the fifth century.
The income of the early tao shih came from two sources. One was the "banquet" (ch'u), which the families of the parish served in his honour. Each was attended by a fixed number of families and was the occasion for presenting the priest with a fixed amount of gifts. Besides an annual "banquet," others were held on the occasion of a birth or a death in the family or to seek the priest's help in getting children, money, promotion, and cures.
His second source of income was the "Celestial Rice Tax." Every year every family had to pay five pecks of rice on the seventh day of the seventh month or lose merit according to a fixed schedule. Since loss of merit meant a reduction of the life span in this world and a chance of hell in the next, there were presumably not many tax delinquents. To evade taxes by getting off the register was even riskier. When a parishioner died, an extract from the register was placed in his coffin. This would identify him to Ssu-ming and the other celestial or infernal officials, who, knowing he was a Taoist in good standing, would give him important advantages. It all sounds very Chinese.
The rice tax goes back to the very beginnings of the Taoist church. As we may recall, Chang Ling required that the families of those he had healed should pay him five pecks of rice thereafter. Now everyone had to pay. I do not know how long the system continued.
It may have changed in the fifth century a.d., when a Taoist named K'ou Ch'ien-chih won the highest favour with the Emperor^ of the Toba Wei Dynasty, which held north China. He assumed Chang Ling's old title of T'ien Shih, or Celestial Master, and in 444, through his influence, Taoism was proclaimed the official religion of the Empire. Some scholars therefore credit him with the unification and the reform of the church. I would question that.
According to the history of the Wei Dynasty, K'ou Ch'ien-chih
'N. Wei T'ai Wu Ti (424-452). His predecessor, T'ai Tsu (386-409) had lavishly patronized Taoist alchemy.
began his career as a hygienist. In 415 a.d. he had a vision. A spirit told him that "since T'ien Shih Chang Ling has left the world, the world has lacked sincerity . . . and a master's instruction. ... I have come to hand over to you the position of T'ien Shih. . . . You will banish the false doctrines of the Three Changs. Rice levies and money taxes and methods for the Union of the Vital Breaths of Male and Female^—does the purity and freedom of the great Tao have to do with such things? More particularly you will take the regulations of good behaviour for the chief thing and add to them the regulation of diet and exercise in secret." ^ K'ou Ch'ien-chih's mandate appears, then, to have been to cleanse the church of sexual irregularity, to make it less mercenary, and to put new emphasis on the importance of good works and hygiene. However, we know that the orgiastic Union of Vital Breaths was still being openly celebrated in the sixth century, and as to taxes, the Taoists were still known in the T'ang dynasty as the "Religion of the Five Pecks of Rice." ^ It is my opinion, therefore, that the reforms initiated by K'ou Ch'ien-chih were temporary and that his unifying influence did not extend far beyond the area of the Toba Wei capital at Ta-t'ung. It certainly did not extend to southern China.
The next salient development in ecclesiastical history took place in the sixth century. Those priests who lived in monasteries became celibate. Convents were established for women. This was in imitation of the Buddhist monastic rule and was popularized by Sung Wen-ming.^ With the re-unification of China under the Sui and the T'ang, the laxity of the Six Dynasties was interrupted. This no less than the spread of celibacy was doubtless responsible for the fact that about now the orgiastic Union of Breaths was forced underground, where at some monasteries it continued to be celebrated in secret.
Taoist, like Buddhist, monasteries now began to issue certificates. These attested that the holder was a monk and had reached a stated level of proficiency in the study of the doctrines. To have such a certificate was an important advantage: monks were exempt from military
*Sec p. 121. According to Pao P'u Tzu VIII "some tao shih devote themselves only to the art of sexual intercourse." One tao shih who was noted for leading his parish in the Union of Breaths was Sun En, who led a rebellion in Kwei-ki (not far from Dragon and Tiger Mountain) and died in 402, only thirteen years before K'ou Ch'ien-chih's vision.
*Tr. James R. Ware "Wei Shu and Sui Shu on Taoism" (see Bibliography).
* It is clear, however, that by the T'ang many Taoist monasteries got their income from landholdings.
' Who popularized the Ling-Pao gods. See p. 137.
service, the corvee, and most forms of taxation. Tliere was no central accrediting agency: monasteries and even individual masters could train novices and confer certificates, each in their own fashion.
Because of the abuses that developed, the government assumed control of ordination early in the eighth century. Only certificates issued at ordination ceremonies which the government had sponsored were valid. Soon these controls broke down. After the An Lu-shan rebellion (755-757) not only were certificates being issued privately again, but the government and individual officials were selling them to raise money. It is easy to imagine the kind of "clergy" that resulted. Even the established monasteries were becoming corrupt. They had been given large tracts of land by the emperor and by rich parishioners. In other cases they acquired real estate from tax evaders who wanted to use the monastic exemption as a "front." They operated mills and pawnshops. Individual monks, despite legal restrictions on property-holding, grew rich. The monastic life was becoming luxurious.
As I have indicated, there was no episcopal organization which connected all these monasteries. Again, however, we hear of a Celestial Master, or T'ien Shih, and this time the title was reverted to a member of the Chang family. In 748 a certain Chang Kao was addressed as "T'ien Shih" by the Emperor Hsiian Tsung.
In 1016 we hear of another T'ien Shih. That year the Emperor Chen Tsung summoned to court one Chang Cheng-sui and then invested him with a large tract of land near Dragon and Tiger Mountain (Lung Hu Shan) twenty-five kilometers southwest of Kwei-ki in Kiangsi. Chang Cheng-sui was allegedly a descendant of Chang Kao and through him of Chang Ling. The story went, in fact, that the Chang family had been Hving at Dragon and Tiger Mountain ever since the time Chang Sheng, the great grandson of Chang Ling, had moved there in the third century. This story, like the genealogy that accompanied it, was probably an invention, but it served to justify a long episcopal dynasty. The Changs continued to maintain a vast establishment near Dragon and Tiger Mountain right down to 1949.^
This brings us to the question of Taoist sects. Since as many as eighty-six can be enumerated and since the statements that have been made about them are even more contradictory than is usually the case
®See pp. 147-148. In most dynasties the title officially recognized was not Celestial Master, but Realized Man, or Master of Chaste Stillness, etc.
in Taoism, it is a question that I would be happy to ignore—as, I think, would the reader. But there they are, those eighty-six sects, and we have to get them out of the way before we can proceed. Fortunately just three are important: the Northern School; and the two Southern Schools, one in the Sung and one later.
The Northern School was founded by an eccentric individual named Wang Che (1112-1170), a native of the northwesterly province of Shensi. Although we are told that the doctrines of his sects were imparted to him by two strangers, there is also a tradition that he was a disciple of Lii Tung-pin, one of the Eight Immortals of the T'ang. Since Lii Tung-pin had presumably ascended to Heaven some three centuries before, he must have instructed his disciple either in a vision, or, more prosaically, through his books. (We shall shortly find other disciples who were separated from their masters by long periods of time.) In any case, because one of Lii Tung-pin's epithets was "Ch'un Yang," or "Pure Yang," this became a name for Wang Che's new sect. Another name was Chin Lien, or "Golden Lotus," after the hall in which Wang preached when he moved to Ninghai on the Shantung peninsula. The third and commonest name for the sect, however, was Ch'iian Chen, or "Perfect Realization," which is what we shall call it hereafter.
"Perfect Realization" was one of several sects^ that arose soon after the Chin Tartars overran the northern half of China. A modern Chinese scholar, Ch'en Yiian, has suggested that their purpose was to mobilize non-cooperation with the foreign invaders. This may have been one reason why Wang Che preached an ascetic withdrawal from the affairs of the world. But surely the main reason was religious rather than political: he wanted to restore man's nature to its original purity.
The asceticism required for "Perfect Realization" was fanatical. First of all, the disciple was to avoid everything that pleased the eye, ear, palate, or any other bodily sense. This entailed perfect continence and sobriety. Second, he was to nurture the yang (Heaven) and suppress the yin (Earth). This was connected with the old idea of replacing Earthly Breaths with Heavenly Breaths.* Third, he was to
'Two others were the "Grand Unity" sect, founded by Hsiao Pao-chen about 1140 and the "True Great Way" sect founded by Liu Te-jen in the same period.
'See p. 133. Contrast the earlier view that yang and yin are not good and evil, but necessary complements.
give up sleep. Perpetual wakefulness was called "smelting away the dark demon." Some members of the sect did not lie down for a decade. Finally, he was to practice all-out meditation. Wang Che once buried himself ten feet deep for two years.
Wang was by no means exclusively a Taoist. He acknowledged "the Three Doctrines," i.e., the Confucian Doctrine of the Mean; the Ch'an Buddhism of Bodhidharma; and the Taoism of Lao Tzu. His successor, Ch'ang Ch'un, considered Lao Tzu's doctrine the original one, but disdained chemical elixirs (his was internal alchemy), and rejected the magical concept of the Immortal, or hsien. Once he wrote a hymn which read:
Sweep, sweep, sweep!
Sweep clear the heart until there is nothing left.
He with a heart that is clean swept is called a "good
man." A "good man" is all that is meant by "holy hsien" or
"Buddha."
On another occasion, when he performed a rite to avert the ill-effects of a conjunction of stars, he was congratulated on the swift efficacy of his magic. "What is this about magic?" he replied. "Prayer is no new thing. All that is needed is to believe in it. This is what the Ancients meant when they said 'Absolute faith could move heaven and earth.'"»
It was natural that as the sect of "Perfect Realization" spread, some of its original ascetic elan was lost. Many of its monks, however, continued to practice gymnastics, breath-control, and meditation. Like their Buddhist counterparts they were celibate and abstained from wine and meat. Indeed the Taoist monastic system became so similar to the Buddhist that in recent times Taoist monks were welcome to stay at Buddhist monasteries and vice-versa. The seat of the Perfect Realization sect, the White Cloud Monastery ^^ in Peking, where
"Probably alluding to Confucius' alleged comment on the story of Shang Ch'iu-kai. See Lieh Tzu, II, F. These two quotations of Ch'ang Ch'un are from Arthur Waley's Travels of a Chinese Alchemist (p. 140), which is the best English source on his life and school.
"I.e., the Po Yiin Kuan, situated just outside the Hsi Pien Gate on the west wall of the Outer City. It is to be distinguished from the Pi Yiin Ssu, or "Azure Cloud Temple," a Buddhist institution built by the notorious eunuch Wei Chung-hsien during
Ch'ang Ch'un took up residence in 1224, kept its role as primus inter pares. It was from there in 1923 that the Commercial Press secured one of the two remaining copies of the Taoist canon for re-publication. But we are getting ahead of ourselves. The sect of "Perfect Realization" came to be divided into a northern and a southern school, the former so called because Wang Che and Ch'ang Ch'un had been born in the north and had carried on their teaching there. Both the White Cloud Monastery and most of the adherents of this school were in the north. It is less obvious how the Southern School was named. Its founder, Liu Hai-ch'an, was a northerner from Shensi. Some of his successors came from the south (like Chang Po-tuan,^^ from Che-kiang) and some from the north (like Hsiieh Tao-kuang, from Shensi). The primary concern of the school was "interior alchemy." Compared to the Northern School it appears to have been smaller and more loosely organized. Its members did not have to become monks. The distinction that is usually made between the Northern and Southern Schools is that the former "cultivated life" (ming), while the latter "cultivated nature" (hsing). The first meant seeking for physi-
the Ming dynasty. The latter is in the Western Hills some miles from Peking and is a popular picnic spot.
"See p. 131. Succession in the Southern School presents a twofold chronological problem. Liu Hai-ch'an was minister to the King of Yen in 911-913. It was not until 1070, however, that Chang Po-tuan became his disciple in Chengtu. Furthermore, there is a theory that Liu Hai-ch'an himself was, like Wang Che, a disciple of Lii Tung-pin (fl. ca. 800). This theory connects the Northern and Southern Schools by deriving them from the same source. But if that is so, Liu Hai-ch'an must have Uved some 270 years, a ripe old age even among Taoists. I would take all this as further evidence that the disciple could adopt his master posthumously, either through books or visions.
Here is one version of the succession in the Northern and Southern Schools:
Chung Li-ch'iian Lii Tung-pin
Wang Che Liu Hai-ch'an
Ch'iu Ch'ang-ch'un Chang Po-tuan
Li Chih-ch'ang Shih Hsing-lin
I I
Chang Chih-ch'ing Hsueh Tao-kuang
cal immortality through exterior means (Hke drugs or incantations): hence it was called the "other-power" school. The second meant seeking the realization of one's original nature by interior means (hke hygiene and meditation): hence it was called the "self-power" school. Frankly I cannot understand the application of these terms to the two schools in question. It seems to me that although Ch'ang Ch'un may have put a little more stock in "other-power" techniques than Chang Po-tuan, both were primarily concerned with "cultivating nature" and neither were much interested in physical immortality. As for the classification into North and South, I suspect that it was not based on geography, but arose by analogy with Ch'an Buddhism. The Southern School of Ch'an advocated sudden rather than gradual enlightenment. It is significant that Chang Po-tuan claimed to have acquired "the highest degree" from Hui Neng, the Sixth Patriarch^^ of the Southern school of Ch'an.
We come now to the second Southern School, which has no connection whatever with the first Southern School. It is, in fact, none other than the sect of the Chang family, the Celestial Masters of Dragon and Tiger Mountain. Towards the end of the thirteenth century the Changs were given jurisdiction over all the Taoists in Kiang-nan^^ and began to call themselves Cheng I Chen Jen, or "Realized Men of the Right Unity." From this the sect got the name it still bears, "Right Unity."
In contrast to both the schools we have been discussing, the interests of "Right Unity" clearly included "life" (ming), and the methods by which "life" was to be cultivated were clearly "other power." Realization of one's original nature (hsing) was a secondary concern, if it existed at all. Priests of this sect marry and hand down their arts hereditarily. They do not live in monasteries, do not wear Taoist robes "off-duty," and do not restrict themselves to a vegetable diet, although they fast on occasion. Living by the family hearth, they are called "fire dwellers" {htio-chii shih). People come to them to purchase talismans that protect the holder from malevolent ghosts, sorcery, disease, drought, floods, cuts, burns, and bad luck in general. People also engage them to perform various rites, not only for protection from all the dangers just named, but also to summon the soul of a dying
Another example of chronological separation between master and disciple. "I.e., Kiangsi, Anhwei, and the part of Kiangsu that lies south of the Yangtze.
man back into his body or, after death, to summon it to ceremonies designed to help it get safely through hell. Some Taoist priests offer more varied services, such as using a planchette to communicate with spirits, telling fortunes by physiognomy, astrology, and hexograms, and even displays of magic like fire walking.
The relationship of these priests to the Celestial Master has been tenuous. During the Republican period (1911-1950) about one percent of them used to apply for his diplomas, which he issued in nine grades, certifying to the degree of religious competence. But he was not the head of a sect with effective powers to appoint or discipline priests or to pass on the validity of doctrine. It is erroneous (though convenient) to call him the "Taoist Pope." He was nothing more than the leading repository of one tradition in Taoism. As such, his talismans (also issued in nine grades) were presumably more effective than those of ordinary priests. Recipients of diplomas and talismans expressed their gratitude with donations to his treasury, and he received similar donations for the performance of Taoist rites. His largest item of revenue was the rent from the 250 acres of rice fields that he owned, tax-exempt. He was able to maintain a staff qf about eighty secretaries and servants, who occupied a large complex of offices and temples just to the east of the town of Shang-ch'ing several miles away from Dragon and Tiger Mountain itself. At these headquarters he kept the Precious Sword, handed down from Chang Ling, with which he could slay demons at ten thousand miles. There were also rows of sealed jars, apparently empty, but actually imprisoning demons that had been subdued by his ancestors.
The last half century has treated the Chang Celestial Masters with wavering respect. In the anti-religious tide released by the 1911 revolution, the governor of Kiangsi abolished their titles and confiscated their property. Fortunately for them, they had a friend in Chang Hsiin, the arch-conservative and Manchu loyalist. In 1914 Chang Hsiin persuaded President Yiian Shih-k'ai that both property and titles should be restored. Thereafter the Celestial Master (the sixty-second of his line) showed his enterprise by travelling to Peking (in order to bless the President's attempt to make himself Emperor) and to Loyang and Nanking, where he performed rites at the invitation of prominent war lords, Wu P'ei-fu and Sun Ch'uan-fang. In 1920 he became head of the Federation of the Five Sects of Taoism.^^
^*This appears to have been the first attempt at a national Taoist organization.
On his death in 1924 the title passed to his eldest son, Chang En-p'u, who was not so fortunate as his father. In April 1927, he happened to be in the provincial capital of Nanchang when it was occupied by a band of Communist guerrillas.^'^ He was briefly imprisoned. In 1931 a Communist army ^^ took over the whole area around Dragon and Tiger Mountain, looted his headquarters, and executed his brother as an "advocate of superstition." He himself escaped to Shanghai, where he stayed quietly, but comfortably in the French Concession. In 1936, after Kiangsi had been cleared of Communists, he returned to live amidst the remains of ancient pomp until April 28th, 1949. Seven days before the Communists crossed the Yangtse, he left home for the last time.
He made his way through Macao and Hong Kong to Taiwan, where he was still alive in 1965. Under his aegis various Taoist organizations were set up there and the Taoist Canon was reprinted. But since one of his sons was dead and the other was in the hands of Communists, it seemed likely that the sixty-third generation of the Celestial Masters would be the last,^^
This concludes our discussion of Taoist sects. They are a complicated phenomenon and resist generalization. Nonetheless it is probably safe to say that after the thirteenth century most celibate monks belonged to the "Perfect Realization" sect, while most married priests (who were greater in number) belonged to the "Right Unity" sect.
We should note that the Taoist monastery, like its Buddhist counterpart, has had a broader function than the Christian church. It has been a place to go for an outing or to entertain friends in attractive surroundings; a hostel for travellers; a sanatorium for the tired urban-ite; and a service center for coping with all kinds of worries — from worry about the fate of parents after death to worry about the cooling ardour of one's lover,^* Since there has never been a hierarchy to en-
^^ Led by the Communist martyr Fang Chih-min.
^®Led by Peng Te-huai, later Chinese Communist Minister of Defense.
^^For a fuller discussion of the recent history of the Celestial Masters see Holmes Welch, "The Chang T'ien Shih and Taoism in China," Journal of Oriental Studies, 4.1-2:188-212 (Hong Kong, 1957-1958).
^^ Peter Goullart tells how a certain Taoist monastery used to cater to the Shanghai demi-monde who came to recover from dissipation or to rekindle the flagging interest of rich patrons. See The Monastery of the Jade Mountain, London, 1961, pp. 191-199. This is a fascinating book with many firsthand observations of modern Taoist activities, written by an enthusiast who, as he told me once, is less interested in the accuracy of his historical facts than in the validity of his metaphysical conclusions.
force standards, the character of monasteries has varied. At some one could find dirt and degeneracy, at others beauty and peace. The character of their personnel varied too — from pimps and gangsters to men of spiritual power.
In general it was not the role of Taoist monks or priests to provide moral leadership. The layman called on them more often to get him out of supernatural trouble than to dissuade him from committing the sin that would get him into it. Their spells and talismans were considered effective regardless of their morals. Whereas Buddhist monks through their pure lives accumulated merit that they could discharge for the benefit of those who patronized them, the Taoists drew their power less from merit than from professional expertise in hygiene and magic. This is not to depreciate their role. They were often useful members of the community, who solved many problems that resisted solution otherwise. Who else could help people overcome their fear of ghosts or regain their self-confidence when it had been sapped by a run of bad luck? In appraising the alleged degeneracy of religious Taoism, we must remember that our picture of it has been drawn largely by Christian missionaries and their Chinese converts.-^'
10. The Taoist Church in Politics
In politics for some eight centuries the church Taoists had one overriding objective: to win the Emperor's favour and turn him against the Buddhists, They engineered two of the three great persecutions of Buddhism: those of 446 and 845. Though it is to the credit of the Chinese people and their system that little blood was shed in the course of this long feud, no one can deny that there was lots of dirty work.
It began when K'ou Ch'ien-chih^ conspired with a reactionary Confucian named Ts'ui Hao to persuade the Northern Wei Emperor that Buddhism menaced the security of the state. K'ou Ch'ien-chih evidently wanted to eliminate the competition of Buddhist gods and ceremonies. Ts'ui Hao, on the other hand, wanted to establish a Confucian New Jerusalem, based on the classics of the Chou Dynasty. The difference in objectives did not prevent collaboration. Under their influence the Emperor issued decrees restricting Buddhist ordination to men over 50 (in 438 a.d.), abolishing unlicensed temples (in 441), for-
^^ The Buddhist clergy has been the target for similar indiscriminate denigration. 'See pp. 142-143.
bidding monks to travel (444), executing all the monks in the capital (445) and, finally, executing all the monks in the realm.^ K'ou Ch'ien-chih, the Taoist, opposed the bloodier measures, including the last, whereas Ts'ui Hao, the Confucian, was all for "killing the bad to help on the good." The persecution was relaxed in 450 and over in 452, when a new emperor succeeded. Buddhism continued to improve its competitive position.
The next skirmish—really a whole series of skirmishes—occurred during the sixth century, again in north China. These took the form of debates among Confucians, Taoists, and Buddhists on the merits of their respective creeds. Starting as early as 520 a.d., they were held in the presence of the Emperor, who determined the "winner" and sometimes ordered the losers to accept the winner's religion. This made them a serious business. One of the Taoists' favourite arguments was that Lao Tzu had gone to India after his westward departure from China, and had converted—or become—the Buddha. Buddhism then was only a somewhat distorted offshoot of Taoism. To support this telling thesis the Taoists about 300 a.d. forged an account of Lao Tzu's ^ missionary activities, the Hua Hu Ching, or Classic on Converting the ' Barbarians. In reply, the Buddhists pushed back Buddha's birth date from the sixth to the eleventh century b.c: Lao Tzu could not possibly i have converted anyone who lived four hundred years before him. And * so it went.
In 555 the Taoist debaters lost. They were ordered to shave their heads and be converted. In 573 the Taoists edged ahead of the Buddhists, though behind the Confucians. This so piqued the Buddhists that the next year they went on from criticizing the Taoists as impure to criticizing the Emperor himself. That was simply not done. Next day both religions were proscribed. Forty thousand temples were demolished, including the images and scriptures therein and three million monks and retainers were returned to lay life—an interesting indication of the place of religion in China, since the whole population, north and south, was then only about forty-six million.^ Soon the proscription was withdrawn and the monastic life resumed.
^The realm of the Toba Wei did not include South China, where there was no religious persecution during the Six Dynasties. Even within the realm these anti-Buddhist decrees were not everywhere strictly enforced.
* Chinese population statistics are notoriously unreliable.
In 618 Li Shih-min founded the T'ang Dynasty. Lao Tzu's surname had also been Li. In a flash the Taoists knew that the new emperor must be his descendant. Though Li Shih-min accepted the honour, his personal inclination was to Buddhism. He merely gave the Taoists precedence at court. Many of his successors, however, were ardent patrons of Taoism. His son, Kao Tsung, worshipped at Lao Tzu's temple and honoured him with the title of "Most High Emperor of the Mystic Origin." Hsuan Tsung (712-756) conferred further dignities on Lao Tzu, ordered that a Taoist temple be built in every city of the Empire, and that every noble family should have a copy of the Tao Te Ching in their home. In 721 Hsiian Tsung himself accepted a Taoist lay diploma (showing not that he was a monk but that he was proficient in Taoist doctrine). Later in his reign (741) the works of Lao Tzu, Chuang Tzu, and Lieh Tzu were officially recognized as classics. One could now choose the Taoist rather than the Confucian classics as one's field of study for the civil service examinations. This was a radical, and temporary, change. Hsiian Tsung must be ranked as one of the two or three outstanding imperial patrons of Taoism in Chinese history.
Patronage of Taoism was not always a safe pastime. The Emperor Hsicn Tsung took a liking to one Liu Pi, a Taoist alchemist. In 820, after he ate a "longevity pill" which the latter had prepared for him, he died.
It was inevitable, I suppose, that the Taoists should renew their struggle with Buddhism. In 840 Wu Tsung came to the throne. He was a mentally unstable young man of twenty-six whose sympathies had been shifting from Buddhism to Taoism. He surrounded himself with Taoist priests and alchemists and dabbled in fasts and elixirs. His Taoism became so fanatical in the end that he is said to have forbidden the use of wheelbarrows. Wheelbarrows broke "the middle of the road," which in Chinese can also mean "the heart of the Tao." Like most emperors in the latter part of a dynasty, Wu Tsung spent more than he collected in taxes. It was probably this fiscal embarrassment as much as his fanaticism that made him receptive to the sinister proposals of his Taoist advisers. In 842 he began to issue a series of anti-Buddhist decrees, which reached their climax in 845. That year 260,000 monks and nuns were ordered to become laymen, subject to taxation. The gold, silver, and bronze images from 4,600 temples and
even from the homes of Buddhist families were to be melted down and handed in to the Board of Revenue. Finally the proscription was extended to all "foreign" religions, including the Nestorian Christians, and the Zoroastrians. These did not make as full a recovery as did the Buddhists when, in 846, the persecution abated.*
In the Sung Dynasty, two Emperors were particularly ardent Taoists: Chen Tsung (998-1022) and Hui Tsung (1101-1126). We have already noted their respective roles in popularizing the Jade Emperor and enfeoffing the Chang Celestial Master at Dragon and Tiger Mountain. We need only add that both of them patronized the compilation of the Taoist canon, which was catalogued in the tenth century and first printed in 1019.
The Sung was succeeded by the dynasty of the Mongol invaders, or the Yiian. The Yiian saw the zenith of Taoist political fortunes. In 1219 Chingiz Khan, who was at that time in the west, summoned the Taoist monk Ch'ang Ch'un to come and preach to him. Ch'ang Ch'un had succeeded Wang Che as head of the Northern School^ in 1170; he was now seventy-one years old. Four years later, after a tremendous journey across Central Asia, he reached Imperial headquarters in Afghanistan. When he arrived, he lectured Chingiz on the art of nourishing the vital spirit. "To take medicine for a thousand years," he said, "does less good than to be alone for a single night." Such forthright injunctions to subdue the flesh pleased the great conqueror, who wrote Ch'ang Ch'un after his return to China, asking that he "recite scriptures on my behalf and pray for my longevity." In 1227 Chingiz decreed that all priests and persons of religion in his empire® were to be under Ch'ang Ch'un's control and that his jurisdiction over the Taoist community was to be absolute. On paper, at least, no Taoist before or since has ever had such power. It did not last long, for both Chingiz and Ch'ang died that same year (1227).
Ch'ang Ch'un was succeeded as head of the Northern School by Li Chih-ch'ang (1193-1278),'^ who proceeded to throw away all the
* This episode of Chinese history is well described in E. O. Reischauer's Ennin's Travels in T'ang China.
^See pp. 146-147.
° Which still included only a small part of China. The Mongol conquest was not completed until 1278.
^ Li Chih-ch'ang wrote the excellent account of Ch'ang Ch'un's journey to the west, which Arthur Waley has translated in Travels of a Chinese Alchemist.
political advantage that his master had won. He did not at once lose favour. In 1253 Mongka Khan confirmed him as head of the Taoist church and decreed that all persons taking their vows as Taoist monks and nuns must get their certificates stamped by him.® But in 1255, soon after the Mongols had enthusiastically taken up Buddhism in its Tibetan form, Li Chih-ch'ang decided to renew the old feud. He sent emissaries to the capital at Karakorum who began distributing the Classic on Converting the Barbarians.^ This led to three debates (in 1255, 1256, and 1258) in each of which the Taoists were shown to be guilty of calumny, circulating forged texts, and appropriating Buddhist temples and images. The Mongol rulers, who presided, ordered them to make restitution and desist. Finally in 1281, after the Taoists had set fire to one of their own temples in order to cast blame on the Buddhists, Khubilai Khan ordered that all Taoist scriptures except the Tao Te Ching be burned. Though this book burning was not completely effective,^** it did mark the end of the Buddhist-Taoist feud.
We might suppose that it also ended imperial favour towards the Taoists. But the very next year (or if not then, in 1289) who should Khubilai receive at Court but Chang Tsung-yen. He was the Celestial Master then in office at Dragon and Tiger Mountain: he claimed to be thirty-sixth in line from Chang Ling. In a previous imperial audience (1277) Khubilai had akeady confirmed his title and given him jurisdiction over all the Taoists in Kiangnan.^^ Now he summoned him again and asked that he bring along the Jade Seal and Precious Sword that had been in the family since the Han Dynasty (so the story went). Over these regalia the Emperor sighed a long time, saying: "Dynasties have changed I don't know how often, but the Sword and Seal of the Celestial Master, handed on to son as to grandson, have come down to today. Must not this outcome have had the help of the gods ?" The tide and ecclesiastical jurisdiction of the Changs was made hereditary for future generations. The old Southern School had faded away: the new Southern School was now launched. As Fu Ch'in-chia points out, this was really the beginning of the Chang family's importance.
* Since the Mongols by now held all north and west China, this meant a wider jurisdiction over the Taoist clergy than that held by Ch'ang Ch'un.
•See p. 152.
^° It was effective enough to reduce the size of the Taoist canon from 4565 volumes in its Sung edition to 1120 volumes in its Ming edition.
" Sec p. 148, note 13.
It is significant, I think, tliat Khubilai showed such favour to the Celestial Masters after having wholly lost patience with the Taoists in the North. It indicates that he saw no connection between the two schools.
Once having gained imperial favour the Celestial Masters were eager to keep it. In 1368, as soon as the first Ming Emperor had driven out the Mongols, Chang Cheng-ch'ang hastened to Court. He was confirmed in the title of "Realized Man." It was not so grand a title as "Celestial Master," but in the new Taoist Control Office that the Ming set up in 1383, he was accorded the second of the nine official ranks. This Control Office, the Tao Lu Szu, supervised the activities of Taoist priests throughout the Empire. Its non-salaried bureaucracy extended down to the level of the hsien, or township. Such tight supervision was characteristic of the Ming. It also reflects an increasing tendency on the part of the government to view the Taoist clergy as a single group, often rascally and potentially seditious. The Control Office classified them into two categories: "Right Unity" and "Perfect Realization." This confirms the idea that during this period most of the clergy belonged to one of these two schools.
The long reign of Ming Shih Tsung (1522-1567) was probably the last in Chinese history which saw the Taoists in high imperial favour. Shih Tsung's enthusiasm for Taoist fasts and diplomas are said to have distracted him from the tasks of government. A priest from Dragon and Tiger Mountain, one Shao Yiian-chieh, was given high honours and made general head of the Taoist religion. Another Taoist became Tutor to the Heir Apparent.
All this was, as I say, for the last time. In the Ch'ing dynasty (1644-1911), the Celestial Master was demoted from the second to the fifth rank. He was forbidden to issue diplomas. Only two emperors, Yung Cheng and Chia Ch'ing, showed any interest or favour towards Taoism. This did not reflect any sudden change in the status of Taoism. Rather, it signalized the end of a decline in its political fortunes that had begun in the Sung dynasty and to which reigns like that of Ming Shih Tsung had been merely exceptions.
The primary reason for this decline was, I think, the rise of Neo-Confucianism. The latter, which was a synthesis of Confucianism, Taoism, and Buddhism, had begun to draw the literati away from Taoism and Buddhism proper during the Sung Dynasty. In 1237 the
government made it orthodox and it remained so until 1905.^^ Religious Taoism was completely abandoned by the upper classes. Gone were the times when a great scholar like Su Tung-p'o would look with equal favour on Buddhist philosophy, Taoist elixirs, and Confucian ethics. Today, after centuries of decay, the church has reached the end of the road. The sixty-third Celestial Master will probably be the last. The White Cloud Temple and a few others may be preserved as cultural monuments with a handful of priests as caretakers, but their religious function is over. This is not merely because the Communist government disapproves of religion, but because Western technology has shown the people more reliable ways of coping with practical difficulties than the purchase of amulets.
Today the most vital element in Taoism, aside from the philosophy of Lao Tzu, is the lay societies and sects. Often secret, they have flourished in China since the days of the Red Eyebrows, who overthrew Wang Mang in 25 a.d. They might be compared to the Continental — in contrast to the Anglo-Saxon — Freemasons. One of their goals has been to toster charity and asceticism on the part of their members: another has been to organize opposition against "too much government." Their secrets include everything from passwords to charms and spirit-writing. Thus, although their function is partly secular, they owe many of their ideas to Buddhism and especially to Taoism. Since the beginning of the Ming Dynasty such groups have led at least eight rebellions against the central government, in two of which they probably came as close to conquering China as the Yellow Turbans did in 184 a.d.^^
Because they represent a two-thousand-year tradition of individualism and of revolt against tyranny, they have been vigorously suppressed since the Communists came to power. But they have proved a tougher nut to crack than the Celestial Master. The I Kuan Tao ("Way of Pervading Unity") is a case in point. Its origins are very obscure: perhaps it was started by remnants of the Boxers (themselves a society with Taoist roots). It accepts all the major religions—Confucianism, Taoism, Buddhism, Christianity, and Islam. It worships the images of their respective gods and prophets. Behind and above these, however,
"With an interruption in the early Yiian Dynasty. Yiian Jen-Tsung re-established it in 1313.
"The White Lotus rebellion (1356-1369) and the T'ai P'ing rebellion (1854-1867).
it honours the Mother of No-Birth, who created the world. Like other such groups it encourages abstinence from meat, alcohol, and tobacco; reduction of desires and control of the mind. Its members use the planchette (for automatic writing), talismans, and incantations. The Communist campaign against the I Kuan Tao and similar groups started in 1951. At the end of 1953 it was announced that "four million duped members had withdrawn from these reactionary sects." ^"^ But reports of their activities continued to appear frequently in the mainland press through the year 1958.
11. Later Philosophical Taoism
Finally, we come to philosophical Taoism. What was its role in Chinese life after the third century a.d..?
Its role is difficult to describe, not because it was slight, but because it was so large. The ideas of Lao Tzu and Chuang Tzu, instead of remaining the special property of a group like the Pure Conversationalists, slowly permeated Chinese society. "In office a Confucian, in retirement a Taoist," became the tag of the scholar-official and even his Confucianism, after the thirteenth century, was to a large extent philosophical Taoism in disguise. This Neo-Confucianism, as it was called, developed because Confucius had never formulated a metaphysics and the lack of it put his later followers at a disadvantage in their rivalry with the complete philosophical systems of Taoism and Buddhism. Hence the Neo-Confucians borrowed the Taoist concept of an underlying unity, which does nothing, but accomplishes everything. They called it T'ai Chi or the Grand Ultimate. They took the old Confucian concept of the Rites, //', and extended it to include the laws of nature as well as of man. T'ai Chi and li were thus equivalent to the Unnameable and Nameable aspects of Tao.^ The Neo-Confucians further adopted the Taoist goals of minimizing desires, returning to the purity of one's original nature, identification of the individual with the universe, and even the self-expressionism of feng liu. As Fung Yu-lan says, the Neo-Confucians were "more Taoistic than the Taoists and more Buddhistic than the Buddhists." ^ And, as he also points
"See Richard Walker, China under Communism, p. 189.
^ See p. 55 ff. Li, the Rites, is not written with the same character as //, the laws of man and nature, or Reason.
'A Short History of Chinese Philosophy, p. 318.
out, the brand of Buddhism that influenced them the most was Ch'an which, in turn, was the brand most heavily influenced by Taoism. Neo-Confucianism, which thus received a double infusion of Taoism, was orthodox in China from 1237 to 1905. Every Chinese official had to master Chu Hsi's commentaries on the classics or fail in his examinations.
I have just mentioned the Taoist influence on Ch'an Buddhism. This school, which appealed particularly to intellectuals, flourished in China from the T'ang through the Sung dynasties and in Japan from the time of the Sung until today. The Japanese—and most Westerners—call it Zen. We have only the space to note that its roots in Lao Tzu are clear. Zen rejects verbal teaching, disregards logic, "discards morality," and regards Heaven and Earth as "unkind." It sees no value in "good deeds." The only way to be saved is to do nothing about it. Zen believes that salvation, in fact, is a return to our original nature; that no one else can do it for us; and that doing it makes us into the most ordinary and wonderful people. The residents of Lao Tzu s Utopia (Chapter 80) might join the Zen monk in saying
"Here is a miracle of Tao! I draw water, I chop wood."
What Zen asserts and Lao Tzu did not was that this return to our original nature could, after certain preparation, occur irreversibly in the twinkling of an eye. Hence it was called the School of Sudden Enlightenment.
Zen Buddhism and Neo-Confucianism illustrate only two aspects of the Taoist permeation of Chinese society to which I alluded above. Another aspect was in the field of art. Philosophical Taoism, first on its own account and then through Zen Buddhism as well, exercised an important influence on Chinese painting, poetry, music, and sculpture. It is no coincidence that the reign of Hsiian Tsung, the great imperial patron of Taoism, was probably the most creative period in Chinese cultural history. In Lao Tzu and Chuang Tzu Chinese artists have found purpose, method, and themes. As an example, let us consider landscape painting. In China the purpose of landscape painting has been to express the identification of the painter with nature.^ To use
'Kuo Hsi, the great Sung painter, said this explicitly: "The artist should identify himself with the landscape."
Lao Tzu's words, the painter, like the sage, must "clasp the Primal Unity" (22W). His method, once his novitiate is passed, is to reject rules (like the wheelwright in Chuang Tzu XIII, 10), to "discard knowledge" (19W). He must "see without looking" (47W) so that he comes to know his subject from the inside, like the carver in Chuang Tzu III, 2. Only in this way can his brush catch the ch'i, or vital breath, of what he is painting. The first of the Six Canons of Hsieh Ho (ca. 500 a.d.), which became the basis for the Chinese theory of art, was ch'i yiin shen tung, that is, "[through being in] harmony [with] the vital breath [of the subject, portray its] living movement." The ch'i must be caught even at the expense of inaccuracy or distortion, for if the artist misses it, he has missed the essence, the spark of Tao. The theme in landscape painting is the natural world. We dive with the artist into the luminous water where fishes take their pleasure, as in Chuang Tzu XVII, 13. Or we may think of Chuang Tzu I, 2 when we see a cicada as tall as a man and the grass bending over our heads as high as the tree tops. In landscapes proper the artist leads us from busy villages up a mountain path past pines as twisted as the tree in Chuang Tzu I, 7 until we reach a precipitous niche, suitable for quiet and meditation. There he confronts us with the Void. The mountains melt into mist and the mist into nothingness. We think of what was "formlessly fashioned, that existed before Heaven and Earth, without sound, without substance, dependent on nothing, unchanging, all pervading, unfailing" (25W). We remember that if we "push far enough toward the Void, hold fast enough to Quietness, all the ten Thousand Things can be worked on by us" (16).
This does not mean that the philosophy of Lao Tzu and Chuang Tzu was the only kind of Taoism that influenced the artist. Taoist hagiography, with its fantastic legends and innumerable Immortals, was rich in themes for the artist. The earliest essay on landscape painting by the first great Chinese painter was How to Paint the Cloud Mountain Terrace by Ku K'ai-chih (344-406). In it he discusses the way to depict an episode in the life of Chang Ling, the first Celestial ' Master.
Much that I have said about landscape painting could be applied to poetry. Some of the themes of the Chinese poet are personal emotions, like homesickness and love. Others stem from the Confucian view of art—that its purpose is to edify. But more characteristic than
any of these is the theme of communion with nature. The poet no less than the painter loved mist and silence. He was fascinated by the ideal of the hermit who practiced inaction far from cities and had found serenity and perhaps immortality in his mountain hut. Chia Tao (777-841) writes of a visit to such a hermit:
Under a pine
I found his boy. He told me,
"Master's off to gather roots and herbs.
But where he is
Upon this mountain in the depth of cloud
I cannot tell."
Creative art is not so rigidly compartmentaHzed in China as in the West. Painting is a branch of calligraphy.* Poetry is both calligraphic and musical. The artist does not confine himself to a single medium. Some of the greatest poets, like Wang Wei or Su Tung-p'o, were equally great painters. Underlying creation in all media, even by artists of a Confucian outlook, there was a basically Taoist concept: spontaneity. If the creative work reflected the "original nature" of the artist, it would be fresh and perfect.
This is as far as we shall carry the history of philosophical Taoism. I hope it is far enough to suggest that Lao Tzu, in the long run, succeeded remarkably well. He believed in anonymity and his greatest success has been under labels other than his own. Yet the Tao Te Ching itself has continued to be one of the most widely read and highly prized of Chinese books, as necessary a complement to the Confucian classics as yin is to yang. We find it not only in the hands of those who announce themselves as philosophical Taoists: we find it everywhere—in the imperial palace, in the family bookshelf, in the artist's studio, in the alchemist's laboratory, at the elbow of the poet, by the hermit's pillow, in the library of the Taoist temple, in the lodge-room of the secret sect. Everyone has interpreted it after his own fashion, just as everyone does today. But we must not assume that it was wholly misinterpreted—even in the temple. Lao Tzu's ideas penetrated downwards into every branch of Taoism until they were blocked by that branch's peculiar preoccupations. The Taoist clergy, for instance, could
*The greatest Chinese calligrapher, Wang Hsi-chih (321-379), was a "Five Pecks of Rice" Taoist.
hardly accept the idea that "riches and honour breed insolence that brings ruin in its train" (9)—though they found it to be true enough at times. They could, however, preach "serenity and calm." Taoist books hke the Kuan Yin Tzu (T'ang dynasty) contained a strong element of philosophical Taoism along with alchemy and hygiene. Li Po, whom many consider the greatest Chinese poet, was deeply interested in alchemy, took a Taoist lay diploma, and seriously considered himself a "Banished Immortal," that is, a hsien who had been sent down to earth for committing a misdemeanor in Heaven. None of this, I think, would have appealed to Lao Tzu. And yet Li Po exemplified as well as any of his contemporaries the philosophical tradition of devotion to Nature and spontaneity at all costs. Like many others he only took a part of Lao Tzu—the part that he needed—and in so doing he added another chapter to the history of the parting of the Way.
But there were certain centripetal forces acting on the Taoist movement. One was the Buddhist-Taoist feud, which must have tended to throw all Taoists together. Another was the T'ang dynasty's acceptance of Lao Tzu as imperial ancestor, which must have encouraged the various branches of Taoism to claim him as their common founder.
A third was the Taoist control office inaugurated by the Ming. A fourth was the recurrent compilation of the Taoist canon, which included everything from Lao Tzu and Chuang Tzu through the Pao P'u Tzu and works on the pantheon to the travels of Ch'ang Ch'un and the Kan Ying P'ien. The fact that all these books were included in a single compilation implied that all were connected. One of the things that connected most of them was a common reverence for the name of Lao Tzu. Thus he continued to be the patron saint of men who differed as much in tastes and goals as the Mississippi Senator differs from the Harlem Congressman, though both belong to the same party.
For the Taoist movement was essentially heterogeneous, despite the centripetal forces I have mentioned. Indeed, its vastness and variety leave one a little dazed, wishing there were some simple way of summing it all up. I am afraid there is not. We can only say that it has been immensely important. Half the soul of China is Taoist. Anyone who attempts to understand or to cope with China without understanding this iceberg of thought patterns, so little of which shows on
the surface of the modern Chinese mind, can have only partial success.
The Chinese themselves sum up Taoism by dividing it into Tao chia and Tao chiao—t\\t "Taoist school" and "Taoist sect." The first category they restrict to partisans of the philosophy of Lao Tzu and Chuang Tzu. In the second they include all those groups that have taken immortality as their goal—alchemists, hygienists, magicians, eclectics, and, in particular, the members of the Taoist church. This is a rough division, but it is a helpful one. Immortality was the issue that marked off Chuang Tzu from the fang shih; Liu Ling from the alchemists; and that today marks off the Taoists whom we in the West might listen to and those whom we can only regard as representatives of quaint, but moribund superstition.
What will happen to Lao Tzu in the new China? I do not know. His book is still in print. He can, of course, be made into something of a Marxist. The first line of Chapter 17 has been translated: "In highest antiquity [the people] did not know private property"; versus Mr. Waley's "Of the highest, the people merely know that such a one exists." In the same way the summons to trance in Chapter 56^ becomes a plea to "dissolve the feudal class-distinctions." Joseph Need-ham, following Hou Wai-lu, develops such interpretations at length in the second volume of his monumental Science and Civilization in China.^ At his hands Lao Tzu the individuaUst becomes Lao Tzu the coUectivist. Lao Tzu's opposition to all property becomes opposition to private property. His opposition to all government becomes opposition to feudal-bureaucratic government. Perhaps Mr. Needham is right about Lao Tzu: or perhaps he is falling into what he calls "the practice of making the ambiguities of Lao Tzu serve one's own purposes." "^ But I do not see how even the most judicious re-interpretation can make Lao Tzu into an advocate of the police state. I think there is hope in the fact that, just as his book was spared by the First Emperor in 213 b.c. and then inspired the gentle reigns of the Early Han, so it is being spared today.
* Sec p. 70 for Mr. Waley's translation. •Vol. II, pp. 107-115. ' Ibid., Vol. II, p. 432.
Part Four: TAO TODAY
GONZALo: r th' commonwealth I would by contraries Execute all things; for no kind of traffic Would I admit; no name of magistrate; Letters should not be known; riches, poverty, And use of service, none; contract, succession. Bourn, bound of land, tilth, vineyard, none; No use of metal, corn, or wine, or oil; No occupation; all men idle, all; And women too, but innocent and pure; No sovereignty,—
SEBASTIAN: Yet he would be king on 't.
ANTONIO: The latter end of his commonwealth forgets the beginning.
GONZALo: All things in common nature should produce Without sweat or endeavour: treason, felony. Sword, pike, knife, gun, or need of any engine. Would I not have; but nature should bring forth, Of it own kind, all foison, all abundance. To feed my innocent people.
SEBASTIAN: No marrying 'mong his subjects?
ANTONIO: None, man! All idle—whores and knaves.
GONZALO: I would with such perfection govern, sir, T' excel the golden age.
—The Tempest, II, i, 147-168
Utopias always have a certain fascination, but seldom much practical use. How many of Lao Tzu's ideas, for example, would be useful to twentieth-century Americans?
On the face of it, it is a silly question. We believe—or most of us do—that it is good to be vigorous, progressive, and forward-looking. Lao Tzu believes it is good to be weak and to look inwards and backwards. We believe that what America needs is dynamic, aggressive leadership. He prefers leadership that is listless and passive. We believe in keen competition. He believes in dull indifference. We believe in education. He considers it dangerous. We believe that a man or a business or a nation can never stand still, that they must either go forward or backward. He teaches that to stand still is the most effective way of dealing with almost every problem and of finding
spiritual contentment. We want to be high. He wants to be low. The Tao Te Ching might—with apologies to Dr. Peale—be called The Power of Negative Thinl{ing. Lao Tzu is not the kind of thinker to whom twentieth-century Americans would turn for advice.
Furthermore, it is likely that if Lao Tzu were here today and we applied to him for advice on the problems facing us, he would answer not a word. To tell others what to do would be most unsagemanlike. And if—heaven knows how—we forced him to speak, he would probably tell us to "do nothing, leave great problems to solve themselves, each of you attend to his own affairs."
If this answer left us still unsatisfied and we managed to press him further, asking that he tell us if not how to mend our troubles, at least how they originate, I think he would begin as follows.
"America's greatest troubles come from the advertising business. Do not smile. That business is harmful and dangerous—oh! very harmful and very dangerous. It makes people want to buy things that they would not otherwise want to buy. It fills their minds with desire for ingenious devices and with ambition to have more than their neighbours. How, confused by ingenuity, can their characters become simple ? How, being full of ambition, can they ever turn inwards and grow quiet ? On the contrary, they must be always excessively active to earn the money to buy what has been produced by the excessive activity of others. But this is not the worst. Advertising agencies are Press Gangs in the warfare between manufacturers where one pits his brand against the others. Here is a poor citizen minding his own business. See how the advertisers advance upon him and persuade him to choose a brand and be loyal to it! He becomes a soldier; he learns that because the brand he uses is superior, he is superior; and soon he enjoys the battle, for he learns that by having a Cadillac, he can crush the neighbour who has a Chevrolet. This cannot help but damage his character.
"The advertising business supports newspapers, magazines, television, and radio. Without advertising most of these would pine away. That would be very good, oh! very good. Then people would not know what was happening in the world and soon they would not care. After they ceased to care, they would become quiet. After they became quiet, they would be ready for understanding. The best thing any American could do would be to make a big pile in his back yard of all books and
radios and anything else that talks all the time, and set it on fire. To be always talking is against nature. Clever people are so busy supplying demand for talk and the rest of the people are so busy keeping the supply consumed that everybody knows everything, but understands nothing.
"Then there is the practice of 'pubHc relations.' Public relations are not only harmful, but foolish. To deafen the country with clamour about the good deeds of a man or company is to risk their goodness, while to say that the bad is good will be one's own undoing. Why does clamour about good deeds risk their goodness? Because it makes everyone ask himself questions. Those who have benefited from a good deed ask if it has not made them debtors and dependents. Those who have not benefited ask why others have. And everyone asks why the good deed had to be publicized at all: was it because it was not in fact good and therefore must be made to appear so ? Was it because the deed was done only in order to create the occasion for publicity ? These questions are the reason why clamour is a risk and why it is foolish. But it is more than foolish. It damages character. It teaches the greedy to talk of morality and righteousness. It turns some people into monkeys who do not care what they are so long as everyone knows it. It turns other people into peacocks who do not care what they are so long as everyone admires it. And it spreads like a plague, damaging the character of all the Hundred Families. Soon in your country there will be no one left who does not think it is right to call attention to what he does. There will be no one for whom mention in a newspaper or appearance on television is not a cause for rejoicing, whereas actually it is a calamity.
"What is needed by each of your great men and great companies is not an advertising program, not a public relations program, but an anonymity program. Each company dien would have a Vice-President in charge of Anonymity, who would do what he could to keep people from learning about its good products and good works. Then the good works would be wholly successful and the good products would be bought only by those who needed them. Bad products, being the only ones advertised, would not be bought at all. Thus business activity would be greatly reduced; producers and consumers would cease to spend their time in large cities cultivating diseases of the heart and stomach, and instead become quiet. You of all peoples are in a po-
TAO TODAY l^^
sition to be quiet because you have found how one man in a month can produce the necessities of Hfe for a year. But you are not quiet. Behold the result of ingenious devices!
"The next of your great troubles is education. Those who want young men to go to college are like a lot of bandits preying on the land. Your American college is a school of struggle. Examinations are struggle, athletics are struggle, fraternities are struggle. Instead of teaching a boy to unlearn all the vicious competitive ways he has acquired from childhood, it reinforces them. Instead of turning his mind inwards, it fills him with ambition. Instead of making him quiet and opening his ears to intuitive understanding, it disturbs him and stifles his inner powers. The factual subject matter of college courses is harmless enough, but the perversion of character by college Hfe is terrible indeed!
"What else could be expected? The teachers—the very ones who should be healing young minds sick with struggle—are sick themselves. Their first concern is not wisdom, but survival in a jousting match. Like creaking champions they have to be ever padding themselves with heavier degrees and the production of thicker books, straining their ears for faculty rumour, sharpening their tongues for cleverness and reprisal. Are these the perfected men who should be the teachers of the unperfected?
"I have just spoken of the danger of college sports. All sports are dangerous. Could anything destroy character more surely ? Sometimes you call sport a 'harmless substitute' for warfare. Sometimes you make it a part of military training. Sometimes the individual participates with his own body and sometimes by watching others. But always, the result is the same. He learns to expect success by force. He learns to think of himself habitually as part of one group against another group. He tastes the fruits of victory and the weeds of defeat—more dangerous than opium.
"Defeat and victory: these are the terms in which you Americans think of almost everything you do, and so it is impossible for you to do anything without it recoiling upon you. What is there that you have not made into a struggle? Your political elections are a struggle between two parties: your careers are a struggle to get ahead of fellow workers. Consider the Social Register, the Critics' Awards, the Miss America Contest, the Kentucky Derby, the National Spelling Bee—
everywhere I see struggle. But all this makes you beam with pleasure and knock your heads three times in homage to the 'fair, free competition' which, you say, has made America succeed. I say to you, your success is failure and your competition drives half your people mad with praise while it drives the other half mad with blame. You justify this by calling it the way to produce the greatest quantity and highest quality of goods and services—as though any goods and services were more important than the people to whom they are supposed to give a happy life, but do not!
"I say to you there is no disaster greater than never having enough. Let efficiency slide and productivity slip: strike not for higher, but for lower pay and longer hours at a lazier tempo; abandon the vicarious struggle of the baseball park and the $100,000 Question. Resolutely turn your back on all this 'fair, free competition' that has made each great city of your land into a torture house, furnished with a hundred contrivances by which man, as both executioner and victim, can spend his life putting himself to death."
It is true that we asked Lao Tzu to comment on our troubles, not on our blessings. Even so, I think most of us would say that his picture of American life is negative. He, on the other hand, would say that it was positive. Before we go any further, let us clear up once and for all this quibble about "negative" and "positive."
It is an important quibble. It is difficult to understand the Tao Te Ching unless we realize that our "positive" is to a large extent his "negative." To Lao Tzu, for instance, wu wei is the highest ethical good: it means no struggle, no hostility, no aggression, and is therefore negative. In our eyes the equivalent good is "peace" and, whether we mean world peace or peace of mind, we would certainly not call it negative. In order to achieve it we have to make a very positive struggle—"Exactly why you do not achieve it," Lao Tzu would say. One corollary of wu wei is non-interference, either by the government in the affairs of the individual, or by one individual in the aiffairs of others—in a word, the absence of oppression. We call this "freedom," but far from thinking of it as the absence of anything, we consider it the presence of something—something positive and almost palpable, for we like to breathe "the air of freedom." Similarly, tolerance is for us a positive approach to other people's opinions, while for Lao Tzu it was doubly negative: it meant to have no decided opinions of one's
own and therefore to conduct no warfare against the opinions of others. And so forth. There may be as much to be said for his semantics as ours.
I think that one reason for his semantics may be found in the evolution of his philosophy. Early in our study of Lao Tzu we considered the possibility that his philosophy may have been a product of his times—those times of the Fighting States when duke vied with duke, treasuries and torture chambers were full, and villages were empty. If, in fact, Lao Tzu's thinking began when he looked about himself and asked the question "Can this ever be stopped?" he evidently decided that stopping it would require a radical operation on human nature. Human nature would have to be emasculated, to be made incapable of that emotional polarization which leads to violence. Therefore in the Tao Te Ching he performs a series of excisions. First he cuts out desire for superfluous material goods (they only keep their owner awake at night), then desire for praise and fear of blame (both drive men mad), then desire for power (the only successful ruler is one who suffers as his kingdom suffers). But this is not enough. Morality is frequently used to justify violence. Morality must go. Violence frequently starts with a fixed difference of opinion. Fixed opinion must go. But without desire, morality, and opinion, what is left for a man to occupy his time? The best things of all: physical enjoyment and cultivation of the inner life. Once a man knows these, success in competition will seem a poor reward for living. Thus Lao Tzu completes his negative operation on human nature—though not wholly negative, since he has implanted a new motivation to replace the old.
But let us turn to Lao Tzu again and ask him to tell us more. He has only covered the domestic field. What about our difficulties abroad? Here is what I tHink he would say.
"Your foreign troubles are grave indeed. Soon they will be graver. That is because your statesmen want America to play the role of the male. They would have America, like the stag, rush forward through danger, expecting that because it is strong and handsome all the other nations will follow. But nations are not a herd of deer, and leadership is not won by physique alone.
"Thus in crisis after crisis you have tried to exercise 'leadership': again and again the result has been to make the crisis worse and yourselves suspected by everyone. Why is this, do you suppose?
It is because you have continually opposed Tao. Tao cannot be opposed, as those who try are forever learning to their sorrow^. Tao ordains that only when you rehnquish the role of world leadership will you be able to assume it: only by pursuing a policy of isolationism will you be able to help other nations without danger to yourselves.
"What does this mean to 'relinquish the role of world leadership'? It means to place America last, not first, among nations; to resign your lofty place on the Security Council; to cease propaganda activities abroad; to renounce all foreign policy objectives that affect other peoples more directly than they affect you.
"What does it mean 'to pursue a policy of isolationism'? It means to call back the soldiers in foreign countries and give away no more produce, factories, and devices of war. What madness it is to vote your foreign aid on the open basis of 'self-interest,' then in the next breath to call it 'making friends' and congratulate yourselves on your generosity! He who boasts is not given credit. If you have anything to spare, whether it is economic or military or educational or technical, put it at the disposal of all the nations together. It is only from this unity—the United Nations—that you should not be isolated.
"This is the way in which you, the larger country, can play the female role and get underneath the smaller countries, for the smaller countries together will see that they are larger than you are. Then they will no longer resent your leadership and your interference. Rather they will be attracted to you and to the objectives that your leadership and interference have so far hindered you from accomplishing. Train your ambassadors to droop a little, drift a little, appear a little stupid, miss opportunities to promote your interest, and give other peoples a chance to laugh at your expense. Then your ambassadors will find their work easy. For superiority is the form of aggression which is hardest to forgive because it is hardest to requite. Simply to let your superiority be known is challenge enough, but to flaunt it by assisting peoples or proselytizing them to your way of Ufc—this brings ruin in its train. Leave such things to the leaders of enemy nations. They are digging their own graves. Why must you interfere?
"In a word, let your ambassadors be men who understand Tao. True, to understand Tao is not easy, especially when it is the Tao of nations. A nation is not a man. A nation has no heart. Only its citizens have hearts.
"Now inaction cannot succeed except by its call on the heart. Therefore, as a technique for handling nations it is full of risks. Under certain conditions it succeeds and under others it does not. Truly the Tao of nations is difficult indeed!
"Gandhi used inaction successfully because he was allowed to reach the hearts of the people of England and they have power over their rulers. Gandhi is a good example of how an attitude can become effective as knowledge of it seeps through society. But if Gandhi had practiced non-violence in the German Volga Republic to save it from annihilation after your last war or if he had* practiced it to save Merv seven hundred years ago when it fell to Tuli, youngest son of Chingiz Khan, he would have perished as ineffectually as a candle in a blast furnace.
"That is why force is sometimes necessary. For inaction can only be relied on in relations between individual human beings who regard one another as human beings. But force is effective only to the extent that it is regretful. Let your generals cut their nails before they go out to the front, as though they were on their way to a funeral. Slowly, slowly, yes! like water softly dripping on rock, regret and passivity can wear away the granite of enemy ambition."
Lao Tzu's views seem so basically un-American that I would not care to be called on to justify them to a Congressional committee. For the American instinct is to play the role of the male. Even if we acknowledge that there is some theoretical truth in the paradox of action, most of us will continue to prefer that our country act, no matter how frustrating the process becomes.
Is there, then, any part of Lao Tzu's teaching that we can use.? Though his theories turn out to be too radical when applied to domestic and foreign affairs, are we able to find any problems in the life of the individual for which his solutions are congenial or in any way satisfactory.? Perhaps, but there are certain obstacles.
The biggest obstacle is probably the element of mysticism. Most of us take an Apollonian view of the mystic. At best we feel that he needs psychiatric attention and at worst we consider him a charlatan. We— and this includes not only most readers, but myself—have never practiced contemplation, any more than we have practiced scapulimancy or phrenology. So, while many of Lao Tzu's theories are not at all mystical and one can make a good case for them by common sense,
Still it is difficult today not to be suspicious of a teacher who makes so many dubious statements about yoga, trance, secret essences, and mysterious females.
True, Lao Tzu does not claim to have ridden the wind or walked through a mountain. But his references to Non-Being, which is after all a cornerstone of his philosophy, often sound like little better than a play on words. Non-Being or wu yu has usefulness, for "if you mold clay into a vessel, from its non-being (hollowness) arises the utility of the vessel" (11). We would rather say, I think, that it is not the space in the middle of the vessel that gives it utility but the walls which contain whatever fills this space. Again, "Being comes from Non-Being" (40). Now, to the extent that this refers to the creation of the universe, we can accept it, for it is as good as any cosmogonical explanation. But it also refers to the relativity of opposites (2). Brilliance is only brilliance against a dark background. What does this "not-being-brilliant" have in common with the "non-being" from which the universe came? There is a much more serious question: What does it have in common with the Non-Being whose secret essences Lao Tzu implies he has seen in trance? And how is it possible to see the secret essences of Non-Being? If Non-Being is what-is-not, then to see any part of it means simply not to see. And in trance Lao Tzu does see, however little his seeing resembles ordinary seeing and however little what he sees resembles what can ordinarily be seen.
In short, we feel that he is using the word "Non-Being" to indulge in a kind of verbal nonsense. Whatever he may be talking about, in some way it is: ineffable as he may have found it, he has no right to denote it with a word that means it is not. If it is not, then it is not the source of anything, it cannot be useful, and it cannot be seen.
I think this is a little unfair to Lao Tzu. There is no question that his metaphysics are verbal nonsense. But at a non-verbal level, they may not be nonsense at all. He is endeavouring to tell us about something that leaves him at a loss for words. One after the other he tries out everything available as public, common property of human minds and finds that it does not give an inkling of this something. It is neither light nor sound nor mass nor motion nor form nor anything else that is. So, rather naturally, he refers to it as what is not. So far as we have any conception of Being, this something is Non-Being. So far as we have any conception of anything, this something is nothing.
Nevertheless we can know it, each of us, directly. When we do we will understand in what way it is useful, perceptible, and a first cause. In the meantime we have only Lao Tzu's word to go on. This is because there is no way to validate objectively the wholly subjective experience. The Tao whose Secret Essences Lao Tzu sees in trance may be Mind-at-Large, or a physical substratum, or a product of self-hypnosis. It may be an intuitive abstraction of the order of the universe (like a sub-verbal Unified Field Theorem); or a hazy glimpse of the Christian God which mystics like St. Teresa have seen in clear focus; or an alteration of consciousness caused by some natural bodily secretion like adrenachrome. We cannot know. The only thing we can know is that neither the materialists who dismiss trance as autosuggestion nor the enthusiasts who accept it as a valid experience of God can prove their case.
Lao Tzu himself, I think, would not have been troubled by this problem. He considered that each human being inhabits his autonomous private world, and that these many worlds are very different. The point is not hard to grasp. Consider how the world of the Hindu peasant differs from the world of the Point Four technician working at his side; how the mental patient's differs from his guard's; how the Republican's differs from the Democrat's; how your world differs from mine. So many different worlds, in every one of which nothing can exist unless its inhabitant has accepted it! No one else can accept it for him. He may not accept them, and if he does, he can understand them only in his own terms. He cannot see with the eyes of another or feel with their feelings or take a word as they mean it. He is the king and the prisoner of his own experience.
This autonomy of consciousness is, I think, the final secret that Lao Tzu had in mind when he urged us to believe the truthful man and the liar. It permits the Sage to have complete respect for his fellow man. In fact, one might go so far as to say that only by recognizing the autonomy of the consciousness can he have complete respect for his fellow man, just as only thus can he be certain that he deserves theirs in return—though he understands why often he does not get it. That is why the Sage is a person who "has room in him for everything" (16W), who has faith in his own world, but is never going to use a weapon in defense of his faith or in an attack upon anyone else's. He is a peaceful person. He will not be disturbed to find that the Pope is
infallible in matters of faith and morals or that Comrade Beria had been working for the Germans since 1917 or, for that matter, that his eccentric neighbour aboard a train thinks he is sitting on a fried egg. Perhaps he is. If so, it is no less real than the one the Sage himself had for breakfast. To find a logical connection between eggs in his own world and eggs in this particular neighbour's may or may not be possible. If it is possible, it is only in his own world that it will necessarily be logical. He will nonetheless be interested to hear his neighbour talk about eggs. He will lend him a handkerchief in case of an accident, though he may sit in a different car the next day.
This attitude may seem more sophistical than sophisticated, and it is undoubtedly one that requires mental agility. To have it means to keep many things in separate compartments, to be capable of inconsistency. Just as the Sage does not tell the lie himself which he accepts as truth from others, so he has one compartment for his own point of view and a separate compartment for the point of view of every man into whose place he must put himself if he is to understand him and feel compassion for him. In this way he is able to pity others in the fear and suffering of death, but regard his own death impersonally. In this way he approves the thug no less than the Jain. If we have such an attitude, the result is courtesy and civil peace. We do not inquire of a man, "Can you prove what you say?" We are interested rather in whether or not he really believes it. And we may have one further question: Is there any part of his belief that is acceptable?
This is the question which we have yet to answer in the case of Lao Tzu. Are any of his beliefs acceptable to us ? What would be the consequences of putting them into practice ? The answer to that question will scarcely brighten the Tao Te Ching in our eyes. For I think the consequences of practicing it on a world scale would be a world of lotus caters—or such, at least, they would seem to the normal American. Can nothing better be salvaged from the Tao Te Ching} No, I do not think so. "Lotus-eating" connotes the slipshod, the ignoble, and what we would call spiritual bankruptcy, but, with a few qualifications, the term covers pretty well the way of life that Lao Tzu recommends. Few of us could accept it.
That is a pity, because it has two obvious advantages. In America today competitive life is becoming unbearable — at least it is for some of us, and may be for more of us than are aware of it. Like Sisyphus
no one can get his stone to the crest of the hill. Each year's production must be higher than last. If we are a foreman now, we must become a superintendent. If we are Chairman of the Board, we must retire and start a new business. Or if we do not win promotion, still we must strike for higher wages. Our standard of living must always go up. It can never get to the top. If only it could get to the top! If only we did not have to buy a Buick next year because we bought a Pon-tiac last! To such subconscious protests Lao Tzu answers: You need not.
Lao Tzu turns upside down the pyramid of values and offers us the material for a comedy. Failure becomes success. The common labourer, the swillman, and the tramp turn out to be more successful than the Chairman of the Board. Since there are more common labourers than Chairmen of the Board, this yields a net gain to the success of the community. But the Chairman benefits by the inversion of values. If he accepts Lao Tzu's teaching that it is good to be low, he has something to look forward to again. Conversely, the swillman benefits less than we might think. He is already on his way to being a Sage or he would not be content to be a swillman.
But this is not as comic as it may appear. It is a serious answer to serious problems. Because te is independent of social success, Lao Tzu does not necessarily accord the unsuccessful man a greater te than his successful neighbour. Probably he would, since today's success is difficult to achieve except by those aggressive traits which he considers contrary to te. Therefore the bank clerk who has never gotten out of the General Settlement Department, the unpublished poet who for some twenty years has had to make his living as a bus boy, the widow who can find nothing better than housework when her friends are earning high wages in factories, the girl who is still at home long after her sisters have married, the man who lives on First Avenue and feels crushed by a walk down Fifth, the racial outcast, the misfit, the pervert, and the recluse — for all these people Lao Tzu has an important message. He does not tell them that they have an immortal soul which an infinitely just God may one day reward with millennial splendour for their present obscurity. Rather, he tells them that they are wise to be obscure; that there is a standard by which here and now they are better than most of the successful people who seem so far above them; that this unbearable stone which they have thought they must push
to the top of the hill may be discarded. He urges that they observe the order of life and see the suffering to which aggression and excessive activity have led the men of success. He offers them the comfort of an esoteric discipline which some, at least, are capable of accepting. Thus I think Lao Tzu goes to the core of their pain. He makes it possible for them once more to think well of themselves.
The second advantage to the general acceptance of lotus-eating would be to solve the problem of man's survival. Usually those who discuss this problem conclude that man can survive only if his character is brought up to date with his technology. His character must be improved. Possibly Lao Tzu has a better idea than we do of what improvement means.
For him improvement of character means better suiting man to not fighting wars. A noble man can fight wars: a brave man can fight them: a strong man can fight them. Our ideals of character resemble those by which primitive societies raised their children to be hunters, warriors, and kings. In raising our children to become warriors and kings at school, in the factory, on the political platform, and in the bomber cockpit, we teach them strength and courage. We excite their ambition, giving them—if we can—an indomitable will to get to the top. We show them that they must always be ready to sacrifice themselves or others for the good of the tribe, for a moral principle, or for a difference of opinion. The result is inevitable. They cannot leave one another at peace. Kings will have kingdoms and warriors wars.
Today such an education may be unnecessary for man's survival. Wild animals do not threaten us. Nature delivers more than we need. Lao Tzu was foolish, perhaps, to suggest that his Chinese contemporaries abandon competition in favour of lotus-eating. Their technology would hardly have provided lotus-eaters with food enough—even considering the ehmination of the waste that war was bringing to China. But human beings today could still furnish themselves with food and shelter if they became very listless and very weak. No one in the world needs be strong enough now to get food and shelter by plunder. Against whose plundering then—if this were universally recognized—would anyone have to make himself strong.?
Lao Tzu tries to tell us, I think, that humanity, if it does perish, must perish for its nobility. To perish for our nobility is a noble thought. Or is it better to be ignoble than extinct.? So here we stand,
fretted with golden fire, unable to reconcile ourselves to a quieter role on the earth.
What Lao Tzu had in mind, perhaps, was that nations could grow quiet gradually and contagiously. A contagion of quietism could steal across national boundaries that do not yield to propaganda or force. Any human being, even the Eskimo or you or I, could be a carrier of this contagion. In no instance of human contact would we not have an opportunity to pass it on. Like the Black Death, its most effective carrier would be the one who was unrecognized. But it would take a very long time. Those who were first infected would have to be capable of that odd kind of courage which, according to the Tao Te Ching, makes it possible to defend oneself without giving offense.
"He whose braveness lies in daring, slays. He whose braveness lies in not daring [to slay], gives life" (73W).
"Only he that pities is truly able to be brave" (67W).
It is possible to imagine such a quieting of human society, even a conversion to the lotus, but is it very likely to happen? Not from exposure to theoretical knowledge, whether of Taoism or any other philosophy or religion.
Evolution—and I include in this term the development of attitudes as well as physiology—is commonly thought of as the process of survival of the fittest. Fittest for what.? Fittest for survival. That bulk and strength do not best fit a species for survival was indicated by the fate of the dinosaurs. That wits and nobiUty do not best fit a species for survival may soon be indicated by the fate of man—in particular, those men who are noble or clever. Here is an interesting feature of nuclear attack. It begins so suddenly that those who had wits enough to prepare retreats in the country will not be in them; while those who are noble enough to be at their posts in the factory or airfield will be at their posts; and the majority of survivors will be peasants and savages: an unforgettable instance of natural selection, no less than of Tao.
Some events—indeed, all events—^give lessons to the species they overtake. The glacier gave the rabbit a lesson in the need for changing the colour of its fur in winter. Similarly, the next war may give mankind a lesson in the need for being negative. Mankind may take the low road whether it wants to or not.
It is reasonable to suppose that some clever people will survive the next war. From a Taoist point of view, therefore, the only hope can be that all other surviving human beings will be so confirmed in their stupidity that cleverness cannot lead them astray. Dolts, bumpkins, and savages, they will dully and persistently refuse to rebuild what they have seen to be a self-destructive way of life. They may even—though it is a dubious hope—teach the clever people to be as stupid as themselves. Then at last Chapter 80 of the Tao Te Ching will be realized. Men will "live in small settlements, refusing to use machinery even though it requires ten times, or a hundred times, less labour. They will value their lives and not go far away. There will still be boats and cars, but no one will ride in them. There will still be small arms, but no one will drill with them. They will have no use for any form of writing save knotted cords, will find sweet savour in their food, beauty in their clothes, peace in their homes, and pleasure in their rustic tasks. The next settlement may be so near at hand that they can hear the cocks crowing in it, the dogs barking, but the people will grow old and die without ever having been there."
Appendix I The Authorship of the Tao Te Ching
Many eminent Sinologists have expressed their views on the question of who wrote the Tao Te Ching and when. To me the "who" seems more important than the "when" because it raises a dangerous issue: collective authorship. Fung Yu-lan, for instance, maintains that the Tao Te Ching is not the work of one man, but a collection of Taoist sayings. If that is all it is, we can no longer expect it to make coherent sense. We cannot decide the meaning of this or that doubtful passage by comparing it with passages that are clear. If two passages may have been written by different authors at different times, one has no necessary bearing on the other. The Tao Te Ching then becomes not so much a puzzle as a hodgepodge. Because the book seems to mc to expound a coherent system of thought, I resist this idea. I would agree with what Mr. Waley said when he was fresh from translating it: that its author adapts many conflicting elements "subtly weaving them together into a pattern perfectly consistent and harmonious." ^ To support this thesis I would like to offer a few comments.
If the Tao Te Ching is a compilation—a mere anthology—how is it that it refers to no persons, places, or events ? There is not a proper name in the whole book, which cannot be said, so far as I know, of any other book in early Taoist literature. If some one compiled five thousand words of Taoist maxims at random, surely a few, at least, would have contained proper names, whether of the persons who first said them or of the persons who exempHfied their principles. Hence I believe that the Tao Te Ching cannot in any case be a random compilation. The anthologist must either have excluded any maxims that contained a proper name or edited all proper names from maxims that
^ The Way and Us Power, p. 97. Mr. Waley now inclines to the view o£ Fupg Yu-lan.
he did include. Both alternatives suggest a fixed determination to preserve his anonymity, to deprive the book of "provenance." But v/ould such determination, which might be felt by an author, be felt by an anthologist? A Taoist author might well believe that his book would be more successful if no one knew who wrote it—if, as Lao Tzu says, he did not "take credit for it." A Taoist anthologist, on the other hand, would be likelier to expect the greatest success for his book if it included the names of all the ancient worthies with whom its maxims were connected.
Even if we accept the idea of an anthologist, we are faced with a problem. Why would he limit his editing to the deletion of proper names—a rather peculiar limitation? Why would he not go on to edit out everything that did not conform with his concept of Taoism ? And in that case, he was not an anthologist, but an author. One does not need new bricks to build a new house.
Another version of the "collective authorship" theory is that the Tao Te Ching was the product of a long process of accretion. This seems to me even less satisfactory. It presupposes an initial textual core to which material was gradually added, and this core must have been large enough so that its lack of proper names struck all those who added to it. Then we are back where we started: who wrote the core ? Bamboo strips do not spontaneously assemble themselves into books, and certainly not into books that rhyme like the Tao Te Ching.^
Finally I cannot help feeling that Chapter 70 is best taken at face value. In it the first person singular is repeatedly used; the writer, whoever he was, protests that a system underlies his sayings, but that people do not recognize the fact. Is it not simpler to suppose that these "sayings" are the book we hold in our hand?
Therefore, though the text is doubtless corrupt and though there are doubtless interpolations, I think that the absence of proper names is evidence that it bears the impress of a single mind—and that is ^11 that matters. Who he was has no bearing on the value of his book.^
As to the question of when he wrote it, I do not feel qualified to
" See Bernhard Karlgren, The Poetical Parts of the Lao Tsi.
*My own guess is that he was a well-educated ex-official who had seen both court life and the misery of the people; who had participated in military campaigns; who in his middle years was laughed out of government service because of the ideas he had begun to develop on Tao and Te; who retired to a contemplative life during which he wrote the Tao Te Ching.
■express an opinion. But I do question the reasoning with which some Sinologists have approached the problem. Fung Yu-lan, for instance, says: "Prior to Confucius there was no one writing in a private, non-official capacity; hence the Lao Tzu cannot be earlier than the Lun Yii." This amounts to saying that, since the Tao Te Ching was written after Confucius, no one prior to Confucius was writing in a private capacity, and hence the Tao Te Ching was written after Confucius.
In the opinion of some Sinologists, a good approach to the problem of dating is by the analysis of ideas. If we know what ideas were current at each stage in the development of Chinese thought, we can assign any work to its proper stage by finding where its ideas best fit. In particular, we can find "the opponents with which it deals," as Mr. Waley puts it. Lao Tzu, that is, would not attack Confucian morality unless Confucian morality were already in existence.
This approach is circular. If we were sure when the Tao Te Ching was written, we could be much surer about its ideas. If we were sure about its ideas, we could be much surer when it was written. I have the impression that there has been a readiness to interpret the book in terms of the ideas current in a certain period and then to show from its ideas that this was the period to which it belongs.
Then there is the method of dating by quotations. Chapter 6 of the Tao Te Ching, for example, quotes from the lost Boo\ of the Yellow Emperor, if we take Lieh Tzu's word for it. This should prove that the Tao Te Ching came after the Boo\ of the Yellow Emperor. On the other hand, it is possible that the BooI{ of the Yellow Emperor was quoting from the Tao Te Ching, or that both were making use of a common stock of aphorisms. The laymen cannot help noting that in attacking these problems each Sinologist tends to reject as interpolations the passages that conflict with his own thesis.
The only method of dating that I personally find convincing is that based on comparison of grammar and rhyme structure with works of known date. But even here I think we are naive if we assume that the ancient Chinese author might not have been master of several styles, varying from the colloquial to the archaic, entirely aside from the fact that in this case the author tells us (in Chapter 42) that he has incorporated quotations from diverse sources. Using the reasoning that has been applied to the Tao Te Ching we would have to conclude that The Waste Land, for instance, was also a "collection."
Is there a way to by-pass the circularity of dating methods? Possibly one way would be to consider the Tao Te Ching in a vacuum, without reference to works that may or may not be contemporary, as though it were the only Chinese book we had. Our task would then be to make an interpretation that would be consistent with itself. This assumes, of course, that our concept of consistency is the same as Lao Tzu's. But, making that assumption, the result would be a scheme of ideas not dependent on secondary assumptions about date and text. In a modest way, that is what I have tried to do. It is the reason that in Part II, I avoided comparison with other thinkers of the Chou Dynasty.
The fact is, however, that the date and authorship of the Tao Te Ching, as well as its ideas, will remain problematical. One reason for this is that the book presents two classes of problems under one cover. The first class is philological; the second is philosophical. To solve the first requires a thorough grounding in Chinese studies, which make the most crushing demands on memory and patience. If there is any metier designed to smother the imagination, it is Sinology. Yet imagination above all else is what is required to solve the second class of problems, the philosophical. Therefore the man who copes successfully with the Tao Te Ching will have to be both a formidable pedant and an utterly free spirit. Where is there such a man.?
Appendix II
CHRONOLOGICAL CHART
DYNASTIES
IMPORTANT TAOISTS
IMPERIAL
PATRONS,
OTHER
HGURES
BOOKS (for
English Titles
sec Index)
B.C. 500
400
300
CHIN
200
100
(?) YangChu (P)
Confucius
Mo Tzu
APPENDIX II
A.D. 100
200
THREE
KINGDOMS
300
400
500
600
Yii Chi (C) Chang Ling (C) Chang Chiieh
(C) Chang Lu (C)
Wang Pi (P) Chi K'ang (P)
Ko Hung (A-H)
(?) Huang T'ing MING Ti (P-C) Yii Ching
(?) Ta Tung
Chen Ching Ts'an T'ung Ch'i T'ai P'ing Ch'ing Ling Shu (lost)
Pao fu Tzu
Sun En (C) n. Wei t'ai tsu {A)
(?) Ling Pao K'ou Ch'ien-chih (C) scriptures
N. Wei t'ai wu
Tl(C)
T'ao Hung-ching (A-H)
Sung Wen-ming (C)
N. Chou wu TI
T AI TSUNG
KAO TSUNG (C)
800
900
nVE DYNASTIES
APPENDIX II
185
Li Po (C-A-H) Chang Kao (C)
Lii Tung-pin (C-H) Chao Kuei-chen (C)
Liu Hai-ch'an (A)
HSiJAN TSUNG (C)
(?) Kuan Yin Tzu
WU TSUNG (C)
1000
1100
1200
1300
Chang Po-tuan (A) Su Tung-p'o (A-H)
Chang Cheng-sui (C)
Wang Che (C-A)
Ch'ang Ch'un (C-A)
Li Chih-ch'ang (C)
CHEN TSUNG (C)
HUI TSUNG (C)
Wu Chen Fien
(?) Kan Ying Fien
Key: (P) Philosophical Taoist (F) Fang shih Taoist (A) Alchemist (H) Hygienist (C) Church Taoist
(?) Yin Chih Wen
uncertain dates are preceded by (?) names of emperors are in capitals
Bibliography
For translations of the Too Te Ching the reader is referred to the list on page 4 fl. Translations of Chuang Tzu and Lieh Tzu are mentioned on page 91, footnote 4. The bibliography that follows does not include general reference books, material in Far Eastern languages, or works with only an indirect bearing on Taoism. I have drawn considerable material from two volumes in the second category: History of Chinese Taoism, by Fu Ch'in-chia (Shanghai, 1937); and Fundamental Studies in the Taoist Religion by Fukui Kojun (Tokyo, 1952).
Wor\s in Western Languages
Barnes, W. H., "Possible references to Chinese alchemy in the 4th and 3rd centuries
B.C.," China Journal (Shanghai, 1935), 75-79. Chan, W. T. Religious Trends in Modern China (New York, 1953). Chao Yun-ts'ung and Davis, T. L., "Chang Po-tuan of T'ien T'ai, His Wu Chen
P'ien, Essay on the Understanding of the Truth," Proceedings of the American
Academy of Arts and Sciences, Vol. 73, No. 5 (July, 1939). Chao Yiin-ts'ung and Davis, T. L., "Four Hundred Word Chin Tan of Chang Po-tuan,
etc." ibid.. Vol. 73, No. 13 (July, 1940). Chavannes, Eduard, Les Memoires Historiques de Se-ma Ts'ien (Paris, 1895-1905),
5 vols, (a translation of the Shih Chi). Ch'en Kuo-fu, and Davis, T. L., "Inner chapters of Pao Fu Tzu," Proceedings of the
American Academy of Arts and Sciences, Vol. 74, No. 10 (December 1941). Ch'en Kuo-fu and Davis, T. L., "Shang Yang Tzu, Taoist writer and commentator on
alchemy," Harvard Journal of Asiatic Studies, VIII (1942-3), p. 126. Ch'en, K. S., "Buddhist-Taoist mixtures in the Pa Shih I Hua T'u," Harvard Journal of
Asiatic Studies, 9:1 (1945-47). Chin P'ing Met, see Egerton, Clement. Creel, H. G., Chinese Thought (Chicago, 1953), Creel, H. G., The Birth of China (New York, 1937). Creel, H. G., "What is Taoism?" Journal of the American Oriental Society, Vol. 76,
No. 3, July-Sept., 1956. Davis, T. L., "Chinese beginnings of alchemy," Endeavour (October, 1943). De Groot, J. J. M., "On the origin of the Taoist church," Third International Congress
for the History of Religion, Transactions of (Oxford, 1908), 1:138. De Groot, J. J. M., The Religious System of China (Leiden, 1892-1910). De Groot, J. J. M., Religion in China (New York, 1912). Dore, Henri, Researches into Chinese Superstitions (Shanghai, 1931; especially Volume
IX translated by D. J. Finn). Dubs, H. H., "The date and circumstances of Lao-dz," Journal of American Oriental
Society, 61:215-221 (1941); 62:8-13, 300-304 (1942); 64:24-27 (1944). Dubs, H. H., "Taoism," in McNair, H. F., cd., China (Chicago, 1946). Dubs, H. H., "Beginnings of alchemy," Isis, vol. 38 (November, 1947). Dubs, H. H., History of the Former Han Dynasty by Pan Ku, A Critical Translation
with Annotations (Baltimore, 1938, 1944, 1955), 3 vols.
Duyvcndak, J. J. L., tr., The Book of Lord Shang (London, 1928).
Egcrton, Clement, tr., The Golden Lotus (London, 1939).
Eichhorn, W., "Zur chincsischen Kulturgeschichtc des 3. und 4. Jahrhunderts,"
Zeitschrift der Deutschen Morgenlandischen Gesellschaft. 91.2:451-483 (1937). Eliade, Mircea, Le chamanisme et les techniques archcuques de I'extase (Paris, 1951), Erkcs, Eduard, Ho-Shang-Kung's Commentary on Lao Tse (Ascona, 1950). Fcifel, Eugene, tr., Pao Fu Tzu. in Monumenta Serica. 6:113-121 (1941); 9:1-33 (1944);
11:1-32 (1946). Fung Yu-lan, Short History of Chinese Philosophy (New York, 1948). Fung Yu-lan, History of Chinese Philosophy (Princeton, 1937, 1953). Giles, Lionel, A Gallery of Chinese Immortals (London, 1948). Granet, Marcel, "Rcmarques sur le Taoisme ancien," Asia Major, 2:146-151. Van Gulik, R. H., Hsi K'ang and his Poetical Essay on the Lute (Tokyo, 1941). Hodous, L., "Taoism," in E. J. Jurji, ed.. Great Religions of the World (Princeton, 1946). Hu Shih, "A Criticism of some recent methods used in dating Lao Tzu," Harvard
Journal of Asiatic Studies, 3:373-397 (1937). James, William, The Varieties of Religious Experience (New York, 1902). Johnson, Obed S., A Study of Chinese Alchemy (Shanghai, 1928). Lcggc, James, The Religions of China (New York, 1881). Lcggc, James, The Texts of Taoism (London, 1891). Levy, Howard S., "Yellow Turban Religion and Rebellion at the end of the Han,"