No More Learning

TEACHING RELIGIOUS STUDIES SERIES
series editor
Susan Henking, Hobart and William Smith Colleges
A Publication Series of
The American Academy of Religion and
Oxford University Press
TEACHING LEVI-STRAUSS Edited by Hans H. Penner
TEACHING ISLAM Edited by Brannon M. Wheeler
TEACHING FREUD Edited by Diane Jonte-Pace
TEACHING DURKHEIM Edited by Terry F. Godlove, Jr.
TEACHING AFRICAN AMERICAN RELIGIONS Edited by Carolyn M. Jones and Theodore Louis Trost
TEACHING RELIGION AND HEALING Edited by Linda L. Barnes and Ine ? s Talamantez
TEACHING NEW RELIGIOUS MOVEMENTS Edited by David G. Bromley
TEACHING RITUAL Edited by Catherine Bell
TEACHING CONFUCIANISM Edited by Jeffrey L. Richey
? ? Teaching the Daode Jing
edited by
gary d. deangelis warren g. frisina
1
2008
3
Oxford University Press, Inc. , publishes works that further Oxford University's objective of excellence
in research, scholarship, and education.
Oxford New York Auckland Cape Town Kuala Lumpur Madrid New Delhi Shanghai
Dar es Salaam Hong Kong Karachi Melbourne Mexico City Nairobi
Taipei Toronto
With offices in
Argentina Austria Brazil Chile CzechRepublic France Greece Guatemala Hungary Italy Japan Poland Portugal Singapore South Korea Switzerland Thailand Turkey Ukraine Vietnam
Copyright # 2008 by The American Academy of Religion Published by Oxford University Press, Inc.
198 Madison Avenue, New York, New York 10016 www. oup. com
Oxford is a registered trademark of Oxford University Press
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced,
stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise,
without the prior permission of Oxford University Press.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Teaching the Daode Jing : edited by Gary Delaney DeAngelis and Warren G. Frisina.
p. cm. --(Teaching religious studies series)
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 978-0-19-533270-4
1. Laozi. Dao de jing. I. DeAngelis, Gary Delaney, 1943- II. Frisina, Warren G. , 1954-
BL1900. L35T35 2007 299. 5'1482071--dc22 2007011732
987654321
Printed in the United States of America on acid-free paper
? Preface
Warren G. Frisina
The Daode Jing (DDJ) enjoys an enviable place in college and uni- versity curricula. It is a staple in courses on Asian and East Asian intellectual history and culture. Over the past thirty years it has also made its way into philosophy, history, religion, and theology courses as well as broader ''great books'' courses that are designed to intro- duce students to seminal ideas in the humanities and social sciences.
As the DDJ points out, however, fame and acceptance are always mixed blessings! Many of those who teach the DDJ do not have specific training in its history, language, and cultural context. More often than not we find ourselves reaching beyond our graduate and professional preparations as we try to introduce our students to a text whose brevity belies its complexity. On such occasions the con- scientious among us dutifully head off to libraries, where we are confronted with a list of translations that seems to grow exponen- tially, along with a secondary literature whose size precludes even
a cursory attempt to scan its horizons.
The essays included in Teaching the Daode Jing aim to facilitate
the nonspecialists' efforts to prepare to teach the DDJ. This book will also be of interest to sinologists, since its contributors include some of the leading scholars in the field. Still, readers should know that editorial decisions were made with an eye toward the needs
of the nonspecialist. The contributors were asked to write clear,
vi preface
accessible essays that would help someone who is about to use the DDJ in the classroom.
We have included ten essays by scholars who teach the DDJ on a regular basis. In assembling the list of contributors we had two goals in mind. First, we wanted readers to have up-to-date information about contemporary ap- proaches to understanding the DDJ. For that reason, some of the essays speak about the current state of DDJ scholarship. At the same time, however, we also wanted to give our readers concrete examples of how different scholars have approached the DDJ in their classrooms. Thus, some of the essays un- dertake specific descriptions of particular assignments, classroom exercises, and a variety of other ideas that have been put to use by our contributors.
As is true of any classic text, the DDJ is capable of generating heated scholarly debate. On the assumption that nonspecialists should be alerted to some of these debates we've deliberately included essays by scholars who dis- agree with one another. Our thought was that by presenting both sides of an issue we could allow our readers to assess the options and make their own choices. To take just one example, some of our essayists applaud the use of material from popular culture (e. g. , the Tao of Pooh and the Star Wars movie series), while others counsel against it, arguing that these materials confuse more than they clarify. Taken as a whole, this volume does not aim to make any progress in settling such questions. As editors we are interested in providing teachers with a handy collection of resources. We are not trying to advance DDJ scholarship. This volume is not even a comprehensive survey of the range of options currently in play. It is easy to imagine a Teaching the Daode Jing II or III as there are many voices not yet represented in this small collection.
Of course, to say that we have deliberately included conflicting points of view is not the same as saying that we are advocating an ''anything goes'' attitude about the DDJ. Each of the essays is grounded in an intellectual tradition which cur- rently plays an important role in contemporary debates over how the DDJ ought to be interpreted. Moreover, all of the contributors present closely argued de- fenses of their interpretive claims and their pedagogical techniques.
In sum, this volume brings together an eclectic group of well-respected scholars whose essays provide the reader with grist for reflection about how to approach the DDJ. We believe that this open-ended approach is the best way to begin providing tangible support to those who are wrestling with this won- derfully complicated text.
To help orient readers to what is coming, we offer brief summaries of the essays in the order of their appearance. Before turning to those summaries, however, it would perhaps be useful to say a word or two about transliteration and why we chose not to render all of our essays into one of the two standard
formats. Most everyone who has spent any time reading Chinese material in translation is aware that we are in the midst of a transition. The older Wade-Giles system is what most of the more senior scholars learned as graduate students and is still in use today. The newer, pinyin system is gaining fast and will likely supplant Wade-Giles in time. At the moment, however, we are betwixt and between. All Chinese Romanization is rendered in pinyin throughout the text. The exceptions to this are in citing published works that use the Wade-Giles system and in citing published Chinese authors whose names are rendered in Wade-Giles.
Part I: Approaching the Daode Jing
Part I of this volume presents five different ways of approaching the DDJ as
one prepares to use it in class.
''Third-Person and First-Person Approaches to the Study of the Laozi'' by Harold Roth
In the opening essay of this collection Harold Roth takes up questions im- portant to all scholars who deal with ancient texts. He asks, ''How is it possible to be both historically accurate and yet nonreductionistic? How is it possible to both respect the ideas and underlying experiences found in ancient religious texts, yet also be critical of their authors' understanding of themselves and their traditions? '' Eschewing both the uncritical faith stance of Daoism's apologists as well as the reductionist tendencies among some contemporary secularists, Roth preaches a middle path. Since the Daode jing draws from a meditative tradition that utilizes breath control, he suggests that our teaching include a mix of both third-person analysis (where we rely on the traditional tools of scholarship such as historical-textual research, hermeneutical analysis, and contemporary philosophic reflection) and first-person analysis (where we en- courage our students to engage in simple meditation and breathing exercises that are tied to specific chapters and that add an experiential dimension to their study). He suggests this combination as a way of both discharging our scholarly responsibilities and demonstrating a healthy respect for the integrity and co- herence of this ancient text.
''The Dao and the Field: Exploring an Analogy'' by Robert G. Henricks
It could be argued that a great deal of teaching involves locating analogies that successfully mediate between student's expectations and what a text is actually
preface vii
viii preface
saying. For many years Robert Henricks has used the image of an untended field to help his students understand what the DDJ means by the Dao. Hen- ricks's field is not a farmer's field but a natural field that is ''barren and deserted in the winter but filled with a host of different wildflowers throughout the spring and summer. '' Henricks's extended meditation on this analogy leads him into a discussion of central themes: the Dao's rhythmic cycles from tranquility to activity and back; the need to remain ''rooted'' in the Dao; the true nature of morality; and what the DDJ might mean by immortality.
''The Daode jing and Comparative Philosophy'' by David L. Hall
The pedagogical aims of comparative philosophers teaching in an American or European context are both similar to and different from the aims of historians. Like historians, the comparative philosopher is concerned that students be made self-conscious about Western conceptual assumptions that mask or render obscure Chinese texts like the DDJ. Beyond awareness, however, comparative philosophers are also engaged in cultivating constructive re- sponses to the challenges implicit in competing philosophical visions. In this essay, David Hall discusses the way the DDJ contradicts or even subverts some of the more prominent assumptions about ontology, cosmology, and the self in the Western philosophic and religious traditions. Where many Western phi- losophers describe being as ''a common property or a relational structure,'' the DDJ seems not to posit any such ''superordinate One to which the Many reduce. '' Similarly, where many Western thinkers portray the self as a collec- tion of competing and sometimes conflicting faculties (e. g. , reason, appetite, and will), the DDJ does not. Bringing students to an awareness of these dif- ferences is, Hall argues, an excellent way to introduce them to the advantages of a comparative approach to philosophic reflection.
''Mysticism in the Daode jing'' by Gary Delaney DeAngelis
While its ''exotic'' language and cultural assumptions may make students prone to overly mystical interpretations of the DDJ, there is no denying that it is a mystical text. In this essay Gary DeAngelis outlines the way he employs the DDJ in a course on comparative mysticisms. Beginning with Ninian Smart's definition of mystical experience as a ''state of consciousness. . . 'where one acquires a fundamental insight into the nature of reality,' '' DeAngelis leads students into a discussion of how the DDJ responds to two basic questions:
''What is the nature of ultimate reality? and How may one experience that reality? '' These questions lead students to explore basic epistemological issues as they come to a deeper understanding of what the DDJ may mean by saying that it is possible to ''know'' a Dao that is itself ''unknowable. ''
''The Daode jing in Practice'' by Eva Wong
As many of the essays in this volume point out, we all feel an obligation to help our students catch at least a glimpse of the historical and cultural contexts that gave rise to the DDJ. With that objective in mind we often find ourselves com- bating the twin tendencies to make the text seem either too familiar or too strange. One way of navigating between these extremes is to turn students' attention away from abstract ideas and philosophical principles to show them what the text looks like through the lens of Daoist practices. In this essay, the contemporary Daoist practitioner Eva Wong explains that many of the DDJ's most puzzling passages make perfect sense when seen in the light of specific Daoist activities and exercises. Specifically, she argues that phrases like ''stilling the mind,'' ''nourishing the soul,'' ''infant breathing,'' and ''cleaning the subtle mirror'' point to particular kinds of actions that early (and in many cases con- temporary) Daoists believed would lead one to live a life more nearly in accord with the Dao.
''Imagine Teaching the Daode jing! '' by Judith Berling, Geoffrey Foy, and John Thompson
This essay is a collaborative effort between an experienced teacher-scholar and two graduate students at the very beginning of their careers as teachers. The authors present three ''overlapping'' strategies for teaching the DDJ. The first emphasizes situating the DDJ within the context of Zhou Chinese intellectual struggles and proceeds by student-led discussions about thematically grouped chapters. The second contrasts contemporary expectations regarding gender language with the DDJ's own use of feminine metaphors in order to help students uncover what the text may mean when it uses those metaphors in the way that it does. The third approach aims to turn the DDJ's notorious ambi- guity to the teacher's advantage. By leading students through a series of re- readings of the text from different points of view the teacher can help students to see (a) how their understanding of the text changes with each rereading and (b) that all interpretations are context-dependent.
preface ix
x preface
Part II: Recent Scholarship and Teaching the Daode jing
In part II of this volume, the focus of the essays shifts to current trends in DDJ scholarship. While each contains its own pedagogical suggestions, readers should view these essays as a way of listening in on the contemporary scholarly debates over the DDJ and how it ought to be interpreted.
''My Way: Teaching the Daode jing and Daoism at the End of the Millennium'' by Norman J. Girardot
In his essay, Norman Girardot reflects on his own history of teaching the DDJ at American colleges and universities from the early 1970s through to the end of the twentieth century. Along the way, he describes scholarly and cultural changes that have had an impact on what he does in the classroom, especially his use of popularized presentations of the DDJ both as a way of opening students to the text and as a reference point to be criticized once he has led them to a fuller understanding of its historical and cultural context. Girardot also describes his ''growing appreciation for the nature and role of performative ritual in teaching and knowing. '' These rituals include classroom exercises, writing itself, and, on one memorable day, a college-wide ''phantasmagoria'' called Dao-day.
''The Reception of Laozi'' by Livia Kohn
Livia Kohn urges teachers of the Daode jing to take seriously their responsibility to help move students from a singular image of the Daode jing as an Americanized version of the ''go-with-the-flow philosophy of life'' to an appreciation of the multifarious history and ongoing reception of this text and the traditions it has helped spawn. In particular she urges that students come to understand the textual history of the Daode jing's development (as revealed via recent archaeo- logical finds), the historical reality surrounding the text's creation (e. g. , warring states politics, competing philosophic views), and the role the Daode jing has played in the development of Daoist rituals and practices. Following sugges- tions made by Harold Roth in the opening essay of this volume, she also sug- gests that students would benefit from an appreciation of the religious dimensions of Daoism, especially an understanding of the meditative and cul- tivation practices that seem so critical to the early Daoist communities and the development of Laozi from legendary antagonist of Confucius to the status of a divine being.
''Hermeneutics and Pedagogy: Methodological Issues in Teaching the Daode jing'' by Russell Kirkland
Russell Kirkland describes his approach to teaching the DDJ as ''contrarian. '' He argues that most textbooks do a credible job of presenting the DDJ as it has been inherited through both Confucian and Western conceptual lenses, but that such a view fails to see the Daoist as they saw themselves. Like LaFargue he challenges students to ''ponder the alienity of ancient China'' before making assumptions about what the text is trying to accomplish. By focusing their attention on early Daoist religious practices and the status of the DDJ as a Daoist scripture, Kirkland aims to cultivate in his students an appreciation for both the original aims of the text and the way hermeneutical models are developed, challenged, and clarified.
''Hermeneutics and Pedagogy: Gimme That Old-Time Historicism'' by Michael LaFargue
Drawing directly on techniques developed in biblical hermeneutics, Michael LaFargue aims to cultivate in students a capacity to see the DDJ from the point of view of its many literary forms and implied interlocutors. By exploring the structures of proverbial sayings LaFargue leads students away from the ten- dency to take its statements too literally, a tendency that typically makes the DDJ seem more obscure and mysterious than it is. Setting aside hypermystical readings that he attributes to the needs of contemporary Western interpreters rather than the text itself, LaFargue encourages his students to ask, What ''pragmatic implications'' of the DDJ's statements can we reasonably attribute to the early Daoist practitioners who both produced and made use of this text? This leads, he argues, to a historicist understanding of the DDJ that is rooted in questions quite different from those that a contemporary Western reader would typically bring to the text.
preface xi
This page intentionally left blank
? Contents
Contributors, xv Introduction, 3
Hans-Georg Moeller
PART I Approaching the Daode Jing
Third-Person and First-Person Approaches to the Study of the Laozi, 13
Harold D. Roth
The Dao and the Field: Exploring an Analogy, 31 Robert G. Henricks
The Daode Jing and Comparative Philosophy, 49 David L. Hall
Mysticism in the Daode Jing, 61 Gary D. DeAngelis
The Daode Jing in Practice, 75 Eva Wong
Imagine Teaching the Daode Jing! 91 Judith Berling, Geoffrey Foy, and John Thompson
xiv contents
PART II Recent Scholarship and Teaching the Daode Jing
My Way: Teaching the Daode Jing at the Beginning of a New Millenium, 105
Norman J. Girardot
The Reception of Laozi, 131
Livia Kohn
Hermeneutics and Pedagogy: Methodological Issues in Teaching the Daode Jing, 145
Russell Kirkland
Hermeneutics and Pedagogy: Gimme That Old-Time Historicism, 167
Michael LaFargue
Selected Bibliography, 193 Index, 201
? Contributors
Judith Berling is a China specialist who teaches East Asian reli- gions at the Graduate Theological Union in Berkeley, California. She is a past president of the American Academy of Religion and is a founding coeditor of the journal Teaching Theology and Religion. Her latest publication is A Pilgrim in Chinese Culture: Negotiating Religious Diversity.
Gary D. DeAngelis is the associate director of the Center for Interdisciplinary and Special Studies and teaches Asian religions in the Department of Religious Studies at Holy Cross College. His latest publications include ''Myamoto Musashi and the Book of Five Rings'' and the China and Japan entries in a forthcoming Dictionary of Religious Studies for undergraduates. He can periodically be found running and sailing in Rhode Island.
Geoffrey Foy is the assistant director of continuing education at Central Washington University. He has a PhD in Chinese reli- gion from the Graduate Theological Union.
Warren G. Frisina teaches at Hofstra University in the Depart- ment of Philosophy and Religious Studies and is the acting dean of Hofstra's Honors College. He is particularly interested in ex- ploring points of contact between Chinese and American philo- sophic traditions. His latest publication, The Unity of Knowledge and Action: Toward a Nonrepresentational Theory of Knowledge, is a
xvi contributors
constructive attempt to explore the implications of Wang Yang-ming's slogan
chih hsing ho-i (the unity of knowledge and action) for American philosophy.
Norman J. Girardot is the University Distinguished Professor of Huma- nities at Lehigh University and teaches Asian religions in the Religious Studies Department. His publications include Myth and Meaning in Early Taoism and The Victorian Translation of China: James Legge's Oriental Pilgrimage.
David L. Hall was a professor of philosophy at the University of Texas at El Paso. He passed away in 2001. In addition to three books on the philosophy of culture, a book on Richard Rorty, and a rather salacious novel, The Arimaspian Eye, he published four books in comparative Chinese and Western thought with Roger Ames. At the time of his death Hall and Ames were at work on a philosophically sensitive translation of the Daode jing.
Robert G. Henricks is a specialist on ancient China and is Professor Emeritus of Chinese Religions in the Department of Religion at Dartmouth College. His publications include Lao-Tzu Te-Tao Ching, The Poetry of Han- shan, and Lao Tzu's Tao Te Ching: A Translation of the Startling New Documents Found at Guodian. When he isn't reading old Chinese texts he is said to spend inordinate amounts of time and money on fly-fishing.
Russell Kirkland is a professor of Asian studies at the University of Georgia specializing in historical and interpretive issues spanning diverse phases of the Taoist tradition. His publications include Taoism:The Enduring Tradition, numerous articles and encyclopedia entries on Daoist topics, and a variety of entries in the forthcoming Encyclopedia of Taoism, edited by Fabrizio Pregadio, and Handbook of Daoism, edited by Livia Kohn.
Livia Kohn is a professor of Religion and East Asian studies at Boston University. She has written and edited numerous books, including Early Chinese Mysticism, Daoism and Chinese Culture, and Cosmos and Community: The Ethical Dimension of Daoism. She is also a longtime instructor of Qigong.
Michael LaFargue is the director of East Asian studies at the University of Massachusetts and teaches Asian religions in the Department of Philosophy and Religion. His publications include The Tao of the Tao Te Ching, Tao and Method, and Lao-tzu and the Tao-te-ching (coedited with Livia Kohn). He is known to be a passionate kayaker.
Hans-Georg Moeller is an associate professer in the Philosophy Depart- ment of Brock University, St. Catharines, Ontario, Canada. He has published
contributors xvii numerous books and articles on Chinese and comparative philosophy, in-
cluding Daoism Explained and The Philosophy of the Daode jing.
Harold D. Roth is a professor of East Asian studies at Brown University and the author of The Textual History of the Huai-nan Tzu, Original Tao: Inward Training (Nei-yeh) and the Foundations of Taoist Mysticism, and A Companion to Angus Graham's Chuang Tzu: The Inner Chapters, as well as several books' worth of articles in scholarly journals in the field. When not engaged in doing his part to destroy forests through publishing so many dubious theories, Roth enjoys the world of baseball (playing, coaching, fanning) and encourages his sons to ''get a life'' and not become academics.
John Thompson has a PhD from the Graduate Theological Union with a dual focus in Buddhism and Chinese religion and philosophy.
Eva Wong is a practitioner of the Daoist arts and is initiated into the Hsien- t'ien wu-chi and the Wu-Liu sects of Daoism. She has also learned from the Complete Reality School in China and Taiwan and the Kun-lun sect in Hong Kong. She is the author of more than ten books on Daoism, including Seven Tao ist Masters, The Shambhala Guide to Taoism, Teachings of Taoism, and Harmonizing Yin and Yang.
This page intentionally left blank
Teaching the Daode Jing
This page intentionally left blank
? Introduction
Hans-Georg Moeller
The essays included in this volume present a variety of experiences in teaching the Daode jing, a text being taught by an increasing number of scholars in many fields in the humanities. While each paper naturally presents an individual perspective and a personal approach, there are nevertheless some recurring themes that are addressed in most, if not all, reports. I will try to identify three of these recurring themes, because it seems that they can be relevant to any- one who teaches the Daode jing. Of the three themes I discuss, two are hardly contentious while one is highly so--and I will leave this one for the end of this introduction.
Academic and Popular Approaches
When one is going to teach a class on the Daode jing to undergraduate students who have no background in Chinese studies, one can nev- ertheless expect that many of the students will have heard of this text, if not read it (in translation), or at least texts that are related to it. Most essays in this volume deal with this specific situation that a teacher of the Daode jing is likely to be confronted with. There will be certain preconceptions of the subject that are not academically grounded but are premeditated by the mass media and popular cul- ture. Daoism in general, and the Daode jing in particular, have be- come some kind of Asian or Chinese ''icons'' in the multicultural
4 introduction
pattern of contemporary North American society, and some students will un- avoidably have been exposed to them. The Dao is referred to, as many authors point out, in blockbuster movies (Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon, Hero), it is dealt with in various popular practices such as martial arts and feng shui, and it is sold in best sellers by, for instance, Benjamin Hoff (The Tao of Pooh) and Stephen Mitchell (Tao Te Ching). All contributors to this volume seem to agree that a course or a class on the Daode jing will have to take this phenomenon into account, and while there are different opinions on the usage of such popular materials in the classroom, no one seems to suggest that one can simply ignore their existence.
Since a university class is inescapably part of an educational setting there arises naturally a sort of tension between a popular and a more academic ap- proach to the text--and this tension can be made use of for arousing students' interest as well as for challenging them to question and extend their knowledge of the subject. Norman Girardot, for instance, asserts, ''It's not that I think Mitchell's Zennish pseudo-translation of the Laozi, Hoff 's New Age Pooh Bear Dao, or Kevin Smith's Silent Bob are intrinsically evil. They assuredly are not, and I have used both Mitchell's and Hoff's works in the classroom. When employed strategically and contextually, they constitute an effective way to begin and end a course on Daoism. '' There seems to be a consensus among authors that popular Daoism cannot simply be dismissed as trash or snobbishly ignored altogether. It constitutes a reality, and to deny this would not be very productive. All authors, however, make it explicitly or implicitly clear that a university class on the Daode jing cannot just be a lecture on New Age Daoism. In an academic context it is therefore prudent, as many contributors point out, to introduce the Daode jing within a historical framework and to make it clear that there is a substantial difference between contemporary America and ancient China. A course on the Daode jing will hardly avoid dealing with this difference--or, as Judith Berling, Geoffrey Foy, and John Thompson say, ''Some contextualization is required to engage students fruitfully with the text. '' Teaching the Daode jing academically necessarily involves such a contextualization, including informa- tion on the cultural background and the philological peculiarities of this text.
The potentially productive tension between popular and academic ap- proaches to the Daode jing thus immediately relates to another, also potentially productive, tension that is perhaps most neatly captured by Michael LaFargue's hermeneutical distinction between the attempt to reconstruct what the text ''meant to its original authors and audience'' and what it can mean to a con- temporary reader. This distinction between ''them'' and ''us'' grants each ap- proach its own specific validity and legitimacy on the one hand, while, on the other hand, it also strongly cautions against a conflation of their different
reading strategies. Both reading strategies make sense, but because they are methodologically so far apart it is very unlikely that they will concur. Both approaches, the academic and the popular, the historical and the ''contempo- rary,'' can coexist--in the real world as well as in the classroom. This coexis- tence implies that neither approach should be forced on the other. Popular Daoism can certainly not claim a monopoly on reviving the true spirit of the Daode jing that is supposedly lost in, for instance, ''dry'' philological transla- tions, but neither can academic research claim the Daode jing as an exclusive object of scholarly investigation. To put it in the words of the famous butterfly dream allegory in the Zhuangzi: There is a man, and there is a butterfly, and ''so there is necessarily a distinction between them. '' To ignore this distinction, to try to blur it or even it out, or to claim that it is a hierarchical one, is neither very Daoist nor, so the authors of this volume seem to agree, didactically rewarding.
Which Text, Which Translation?
A second issue that is brought up--again, if not explicitly then at least implicitly--in virtually all contributions to this volume is the practical problem of having to use English translations when teaching the Daode jing (outside the field of Chinese studies). The majority of teachers who discuss the Daode jing in their classes will not be trained scholars in Ancient Chinese language--and the same will certainly be true for the students taking these classes. This situation leaves teachers and students dependent on the sources that are used in class. The very choice of the translation(s) of the Daode jing will substantially deter- mine the image of the text that the course will produce.
In the case of the Daode jing the problem of translation has a much deeper dimension than with many other great books. The Daode jing is a text without an identifiable author or authors, without a specific date or time of creation, and without a definite form. It is, moreover, a book that, most likely, was originally none; present-day sinological scholars mostly assume that the text had oral origins. Many essays in this volume talk about the extremely complex textual history of the Daode jing: it emerged over centuries, and the early manuscripts discovered in relatively recent excavations show different versions of the text at different times. The choice of one or more English translations of the Daode jing is thus not only a choice of one or more particular renderings, but it is also necessarily a choice of one or more editions or versions of the text on which the translation is based. There are translations of the ''standard edition'' of the text by Wang Bi that goes back to the third century c. e. (although recent scholarship has shown that, most likely, even the text that is transmitted as the Wang Bi
introduction 5
6 introduction
edition is different from the text that Wang Bi actually worked with), with or without Wang Bi's commentary in English. Then one finds, though much more rarely, translations based on other editions (such as the one ascribed to Heshang Gong, third century c. e. ? ). Then there are translations on the basis of the various manuscripts found, respectively, in Mawangdui (around 200 b. c. e. ) and Guodian (third or fourth century b. c. e. ). And there are also translations--often the most popular ones--that do not identify any specific Chinese edition as their source. Translations of the Daode jing presuppose a choice of one or more Chinese ''original'' text(s), which are, paradoxically en- ough, never truly originals because there simply exists no authentic Urtext to work with. Sinological translators will typically not only have subjectively de- cided on one or more Chinese editions as their source(s), but they will also rely on one or more specific Chinese commentaries of their choice. To translate the text, for instance, on the basis of the Wang Bi edition does not mean only to follow Wang Bi's wording of the Daode jing, but also to be at least influenced by Wang Bi's interpretation. Thus, to decide, for instance, between the Wang Bi and the Heshang Gong editions is not only a philological, but also a herme- neutical decision for the translator--and this decision is inevitably repeated by the teacher who then decides for one of these translations for his or her class.
The Daode jing is not only different from other great books by, philologi- cally and historically speaking, not precisely meeting the characteristics of many other books; it is also very unique in style. This adds to the difficulties involved in its translation. As many essays in this volume point out, it works more often than not on the basis of imagery (Henricks and others), proverbial sayings (LaFargue), and poetic devices (Hall and others). Such linguistic and rhetorical features are often hard to translate. Accordingly, translations vary greatly not only in regard to their textual source, but also in how they deal with the literary aspects of the text.
Generally speaking, the authors of this volume distinguish between two kinds of translations: academic and popular. The differences between these approaches have already been discussed in the preceding section, and teachers of the Daode jing will hardly avoid taking these differences into account. (Ty- pically, the academic translations are more literal and less appealing to a general reader, while the opposite tends to be the case with the popular ones. ) Several authors, however, address internal differences among the academic or expert translations. Some of these translations are so expert that they are hardly readable anymore--and are completely unusable in an undergraduate class outside Chinese studies (see, for instance, Norman Girardot, note 7). Others, however, even though certainly also expert and produced by eminent scholars, are highly interpretative in a way that often remains hidden to the non-
sinological instructor. I would like to explain this with the help of one example. The line from the Daode jing quoted most often in the present volume (and probably not only here) is the first line of the first chapter. Robert G. Henricks cites it in Wing-tsit Chan's translation: ''The Tao that can be told of is not the eternal Tao. '' David Hall translates: ''The Way that can be spoken of is not the constant Way. ''1 Semantically speaking, the most important difference between these two renderings is the difference between ''eternal'' and ''constant. '' Whereas ''constant'' is a rather colloquial word, the term ''eternal'' is resplen- dent with theological and philosophical connotations. Strictly speaking, these two words, although close in their meaning, belong to very different ''language games. '' Chan's translation of the Daode jing was a major, and highly suc- cessful, effort by this eminent scholar to present the text, as he states in the preface, ''from the perspective of the total history of Chinese philosophy'' and to integrate it into the discourse of Western academia. As a Chinese professor at an American university, he was among the most important proponents of Chinese thought and culture in his time and worked for its establishment within the curricula of the West. With his translations of Chinese classics he attempted to introduce Chinese texts as serious materials deserving the full attention of Western scholars and, particularly, philosophers. 2 So he used a highly metaphysical vocabulary to demonstrate the philosophical and religious status and significance of texts like the Daode jing. His translations thus con- tributed considerably to the academic respect that the Daode jing has gained in North America (as reflected, for instance, in the publication of this present volume), while they also cemented a sort of metaphysical interpretation of the Daode jing that more recent authors like David Hall tried to overcome or correct in their studies and translations. In this way, all translations reflect to a certain degree the agenda of their translators. This is, to use Norman Girardot's ex- pression once again, certainly not ''intrinsically evil,'' but it is something that those who teach the Daode jing in English translation will have to consider. Many translations and interpretations thus function, as Russell Kirkland says, not as a window ''into the text itself, but merely into the mind of the translator. ''
Is the Daode jing a Religious Text?
In regard to the two issues discussed above, I could not detect substantial disagreements among the contributors to this volume. But this is decidedly not so in regard to the third problem that is persistently addressed (again, if not explicitly then at least implicitly) in these essays: the question as to which academic discipline can rightfully claim for itself the Daode jing and, for that
introduction 7
8 introduction
matter, Daoism. This text is a volume in a series on teaching classic texts in religion, and accordingly, a majority of the contributors teach in departments of religion, and, again accordingly, most contributors either explicitly or implicitly take the Daode jing to be a religious text. But this opinion is not shared by all contributors, and it is more likely not to be shared by those who do not have a background in religious or theological (biblical) studies. Some contributors are practical teachers, others are philosophers. Particularly the latter tend to not understand the Daode jing as a (primarily) religious text. I find this an important controversy, particularly because it is likely to also reflect a diversity among the readership of this book: not every reader will teach the Daode jing as a ''classic text in religion''; some will teach it, I suppose, as a classic text in philosophy, others may teach it as a classic text in literature, and others may perhaps teach it as a classic text in breathing (see Roth). This situation may be summarized by rephrasing the statement by Russell Kirkland quoted above--in a less psy- chological and more sociological manner: Our way of reading and teaching the Daode jing may thus serve not so much as a window ''into the text itself, but merely into the education and institutional affiliation of the instructor. ''
The dispute over what the Daode jing is and, more broadly, what Daoism in general is has a long history. This dispute is, one might say, an episode within the history of modern Western academic politics, or even, to use Ed- ward Said's influential concept, an episode within the history of Orientalism. The background of this dispute is aptly depicted by Norman Girardot:
I spent considerable time tilting at windmills concerning the as- sumed two, and utterly distinct, forms of Daoism (the so-called daojia ''philosophical'' and daojiao ''religious'' forms). Thus throughout most of the 1970s, the dominant scholarly and popular construct of Daoism was that it was an interesting, but relatively obscure and certainly minor, sinological subject which, according to both native Chinese and Western scholarly opinion, rather neatly divided itself into an early classical, elite, or philosophical phase and a later ritu- alistic, superstitious, popular, or religious tradition.
It is a fact that until recent decades modern Western and Eastern scholarship on Daoism largely applied such a schema, and that this schema was not only classificatory, but also evaluative: Daoist ''philosophical'' texts (i. e. , the Daode jing and the Zhuangzi) were normally viewed as quite respectable works of universal importance that deserved a certain recognition as great books; that is, they were seen as somewhat on par with what in the eyes of dominating Western values could be counted as theoretically or historically significant. On the other hand, the various forms of Daoist religion that have been so important
throughout Chinese history and the vast number of texts included in the Daoist canon (Daozang) tended to be viewed as objects of mere anthropological in- terest or as relevant only for research on popular culture; they were not granted high-culture status on the basis of the dominating Orientalist criteria. Due to the efforts of a number of scholars (particularly in France, North America, and Germany), however, this one-sided view is, fortunately, no longer generally held. Daoist religion has not only been emancipated as a major factor in Chi- nese society, both historically and culturally, but, in the course of this eman- cipation, the traditional distinction between Daoist religion and Daoist philosophy has largely been torn down. It is now widely accepted that the Daoist classics had, from the beginning, their religious or practical aspects and that Daoist religion was not merely a degeneration of an earlier blossoming but a development in its own right that not only incorporated the classic texts but continued to produce new texts and other significant cultural products and practices.
Even though the former Orientalist hierarchy and distinction between Daoist philosophy and religion is no longer in place, the wounds have not been completely healed, as is obvious in many contributions to this volume. Some of the essays seem to indicate an attempt to reverse the former hierarchy and to establish Daoism as a primarily religious tradition, to portray the Daode jing as a primarily religious text and, consequently, to teach Daoism exclusively so. Livia Kohn, for instance, states very explicitly, ''It is important, therefore, to make it clear from the beginning of the class that Daoism is first and foremost a religion and that, while philosophical ideas bandied about in its name have their place in this religion, they are far from dominant in it. '' Similarly skeptical or dis- missive of a philosophical reading of Daoism, and particularly the Daode jing, is Russell Kirkland: ''The evidence of the text [the Daode jing], unsystematic in any perceptible sense, demonstrates either that its composer had no philosophical positions or that, as some analysts today suggest, he was too stupid to under- stand or explain his own philosophy. '' Earlier scholars attempted to cleanse Daoist philosophy from religion, but this tide seems to have turned.
There are other contributions to this volume--although clearly the minority--that obviously do not take the Daode jing as a primarily religious text. David Hall, for instance, was a comparative philosopher and read the text accordingly in a philosophical way. But he concluded his essay by saying, ''In closing I should note that. . . I certainly do recognize that the philosophical import of this work by no means exhausts its significance. Its poetic value, for example, is clearly as significant as its philosophical worth. ''
How one conceives of the Daode jing and Daoism, and particularly how one teaches it, is influenced by the department one is employed by or was educated
introduction 9
10 introduction
in. I am unable to come up with a statistical survey, but it seems to me that the provenience of the contributors to this volume is, by and large, representative for where and how the Daode jing is taught in present-day North America. It is now pretty common to have experts on Eastern religions in departments of religious studies, or to even have positions for teaching Asian religions. It is very telling that we are now academically used to speaking of religions and literatures in the plural, inclusive of non-Western ones. This is not yet so common when it comes to philosophy: How many departments of philoso- phies, not to mention Asian philosophies, are there? Here, Daoism and the Daode jing are not yet as emancipated as in religious studies. Still, the Daode jing is taught in an increasing number of introductory and even advanced courses outside of Chinese and religious studies.
It is hard to definitely say what kind of text the Daode jing is. I suppose that the Daode jing in itself is not accessible, and none of the contributors to this volume seems to claim such an access. Even historically, however, the Daode jing was approached--in China and elsewhere--in very different ways, and the imposing of labels such as philosophy, religion, or literature is, in- evitably, an effect of the present academic discourse that issues, and cannot but issue, such labels. The Daode jing, historically speaking, did not come with any of them. Like the Dao, it does not speak. It is our lecturing and writing, for better or worse, that makes it speak.
notes
1. Both Henricks and Hall come up with very different versions of this line in their respective English translations of the whole text.
2. His well-known Source Book in Chinese Philosophy (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1963) is still reprinted and widely used in North American univer- sities.
part i
Approaching the
Daode Jing
This page intentionally left blank
? Third-Person and First-Person Approaches to the Study of the Laozi
Harold D. Roth
As a scholar, teacher, and sometime reconstructor of the religious thought of the early Daoist tradition whose academic position has been housed for two decades in a department of religious studies, I have done a considerable amount of thinking of late about how best to approach the study and teaching of the textual materials that are my primary sources. Because of the considerable exegetical litera- ture on the Daode jing that has accumulated over two millennia, it has been necessary to bring a degree of organization to this material and to develop some clarity about the perspectives that can be found in this hermeneutic corpus before presenting it to a modern audience. Moreover, given the context in which we teach in recent times, it is also important to deeply consider how we are to approach the thought found in ancient religious texts in a manner that both utilizes re- cent historical scholarship and respects the integrity of the ideas and the experiences that led to them that are found in these texts.
The academic study of Asian religious traditions in North America has, in the past several decades, taken a turn in the direction of the social sciences as a corrective to the tendency among some in ear- lier generations to idealize them (when they weren't excoriating them for being inferior to Christianity or seeing them as odd variants of it), and this is certainly a welcome development. 1 However, far too often extreme forms of historicism, the doctrine that knowledge of hu- man affairs has an irreducibly historical character, and of social constructionism, the claim that all human phenomena are socially
14 approaching the daode jing
constructed artifacts, have been applied in a far from unbiased fashion by scholars with their own personal axes to grind against specific Asian religious traditions or by scholars who want to lump these traditions together with the Christian and Jewish traditions that they have personally rejected. Deluding themselves into thinking they have an objective or scientific viewpoint, they have established their entire careers on ''debunking'' the religious thought, practices, and underlying experiences of Asian religious traditions without the slightest bit of awareness about the methodological or personal axes they are grinding or the extent to which they remain confined within an essentially Western religious Problematik that is far from scientific or objective. 2
One of the foundational assumptions of this body of reductionistic scholarship on Asian religious traditions is that practitioners, including the authors of the religious texts we study, are essentially deluding themselves and their followers when they assert that there is an ineffable transcendent or sacred dimension to human experience (viz. , ''The Way that can be spoken of is not the constant Way''). 3 Yet since most Asian religious traditions affirm the interpenetration of the sacred in the secular, to begin by denying it and then look for reductive explanations for why it cannot be possible is to approach the study of these Asian traditions from a perspective that is deeply partial and flawed. 4 It is a perspective, however, with which we are extremely comfortable because it is a foundational element of the worldview in which most Western scholars have been raised. Yet it is an element whose dogmatic origins remain largely unexamined. In the traditional ontologies of the Abrahamic religions, there is a fundamental division between Creator and Creation, sacred and secular. Thus there can be nothing sacred in the secular. Whether or not one believes in a transcendent sacred realm, there can be nothing sacred in the everyday world of mundane experience that we all inhabit. Thus both believers and nonbelievers make the same unexamined assumption. To have this as part of one's system of religious beliefs is one thing, but to have it guide one's ''objective'' scholarship is, to paraphrase Sartre, mauvaise foi of the highest order. Yet this assumption has come to dominate the study and teaching of Asian religious traditions in North America, greatly to our detriment.
From my own perspective, I am interested in the possibility that there is something more to the ''sacred'' than either believers think or reductionist scholars automatically deny. For me there is the distinct possibility that the ancient Daoist texts that have come down to us contain insights into the nature, activity, and context of human consciousness that just might be ap- plicable to modern human beings. Toward this end I myself have practiced meditation within several Asian traditions--Hindu, Buddhist, and Daoist-- with an eye toward identifying their techniques of training of the attention
third-person and first-person approaches 15
and imagination and personally examining their effects. Rather than biasing my research with unprovable religious doctrine, as some religious studies scholars would suggest, this has given me an additional methodological tool for conducting a fair and balanced analysis of the very insights into con- sciousness that others assume to be false and dogmatic.
The question I want to return to is this: How is it possible to be both historically accurate yet nonreductionistic? How is it possible to both respect the ideas and underlying experiences found in ancient religious texts, yet also be critical of their authors' understanding of themselves and their traditions? In recent years in my teaching I have begun to develop a philosophy of how to approach these texts. I frame the problem in terms of what might be called third- person and first-person methods of studying religious texts and traditions.
The modern North American academy is dominated by what we might call third-person learning. We observe, analyze, record, and discuss a whole variety of subjects at a distance, as something ''out there,'' as if they were solely objects and our own subjectivity that is viewing them doesn't exist. Certainly there are exceptions: in public speaking one both reads books about the subject and actually practices it; in studio art, a course wouldn't go very far if students didn't have the chance to practice on paper or canvas what they are being taught. The same is true for some courses in music: theory is appreciated so much more by actually playing the music that exemplifies it. The experimental sciences are all about applying third-person learning in controlled laboratory settings; at least in physics, the effect of the subjectivity of the observer who sets up the experiments is known to be an integral part of the results.
In many of the humanities we tend to value third-person learning at the expense of all other forms. Yet do we not find that when students are called on, for example, to reflect on what a famous poem means to them, they derive a deeper understanding of its meaning? Or when students are challenged to apply ethical theories to problems in their own lives, that they learn useful tools and see the relevance of these formerly abstract theories?
In my teaching I have done rather extensive experiments in what I would call critical first-person learning. I say ''critical'' because in many forms of first-person learning in the contexts of religion, one must suspend critical judgment and believe in the truth of the tradition one is embracing. There is an important place for this form of committed first-person learning, but we should be careful to not require that kind of commitment from any of our students in a secular university. But why not allow them to get some firsthand experience of, for example, such practices as Buddhist insight meditation or Confucian adherence to family rituals or Daoist energy circulation (daoyin) in a totally secular context, in which the need to believe in a creed is removed, in
16 approaching the daode jing
which students simply need to be willing to conduct simple observations in the only laboratory we always carry along with us wherever we go: our Beings? Why not attempt to use this experience as a basis for reconstructing the worldview of the people who created these texts, rather than assuming that it is totally impossible to do because human experience is totally determined by culture and hence incommensurable across cultures and times?
I would like to suggest that one way of approaching the study and teaching of Asian religious traditions that is both sympathetic and critical is to combine first- and third-person approaches to them. Toward this end I present some ideas on how to do this while studying the Daode jing.
Third-Person Approaches to Studying the Daode jing
I teach the Daode jing in a number of lecture courses and advanced seminars, from a ''Foundations of Chinese Religions'' course that includes everything from oracle bones to the Huainanzi, to a ''Laozi and the Daode jing'' advanced seminar in which the occasional student is able to read classical Chinese. I try to remain consistent in the overall approaches I use to study the text if I am not always able to follow each approach to the depth I would like. These three approaches are:
1. History: presenting the best understanding of the historical context of the text
2. Historical hermeneutics: uncovering the worldview--the practices, experiences, and beliefs--of those who created the text
3. Relevance: responsibly retrieving insights from the text into our modern context5
The methodological approaches I use to do this are primarily of the kind I have called third-person, but I also use a critical first-person approach that I call ''reconstructive meditation'' in helping to give my students some insights into both the historical hermeneutics and the contemporary relevance of the Laozi.
History
The foundation of any enlightened study of the ideas in the Daode jing is a thorough grounding in what we can establish about its actual history. The primary source for this is the text itself in its various redactions and other closely related texts that were rough contemporaries, such as Guanzi's Neiye
third-person and first-person approaches 17
(Inward Training) and related texts and certain parts of the Zhuangzi, Lush- iqunqiu, Huang-Lao po-shu, and Huainanzi. 6
The textual history of the Laozi is complex and, to my way of thinking, absolutely riveting. Until the publication of Rudolph Wagner's A Chinese Reading of the Daode jing in 2003, the best way for nonspecialists to read about the various recensions and redactions of the text and its major commentaries was in several scholarly essays written by Wagner and William Boltz. 7 Brief introductions to the excavated recension from Mawangdui (ca. 200 b. c. e. ) and to the ''proto-Laozi'' from Guodian (ca. 310 b. c. e. ) by Lau, Henricks, Mair, and Henricks, respectively, touch upon some of these major issues as well; that of Lau is the most detailed. 8 However, Wagner's book is by far the most thorough, especially his meticulous reconstruction of the most important commentary ever written on the Laozi, that of Wang Bi (226-249 c. e. ) and the redaction of the Laozi text on which it was based. In establishing a critical edition of this lost redaction, Wagner provides textual variants from the excavated recensions and from major redactions in the textus receptus (received text) that, although it was transmitted with the Wang Bi commentary, was actually primarily a text as- sociated with another early commentary more closely allied with Daoist reli- gious practice, that of Heshang Gong (n. d. ). 9
I often have the students in my Laozi seminar get a feel for these textual variants by having them compare translations of some of the major chapters between the Mawangdui and received recensions, but it is only those few who can read Chinese that really get a good sense of this. This is because trans- lations of the received text alone vary so much that it is difficult for a non- Chinese reader to know when the differences are caused by genuine textual variants or by the translators' varying understandings of the text. One trans- lation that can potentially overcome this difficulty is the bilingual Tao Te Ching of D. C. Lau, which contains his translation of the received text in part 1 and that of the Mawangdui recension in part 2. However, as the book's dust jacket notes state, on occasion ''the translator has taken the opportunity to give the translation an overdue revision. '' Unfortunately, he places those correc- tions in his translation in part 2, thus negating its use for comparative pur- poses. 10 In these cases I have to fall back on my own knowledge of Chinese to guide students past this problem.
While one must go to a variety of mainly Chinese sources to learn about the Mawangdui excavations and texts, there is a superb source for the details of the excavations from Guodian that yielded several texts with many parallels with the extant Laozi recensions. This is The Guodian Laozi: Proceedings of the International Conference, Dartmouth College, May, 1998, edited by Sarah Allan and Crispin Williams. 11 Consisting of essays based on papers presented at the
18 approaching the daode jing
conference and of a record of the discussions that ensued therein, it presents details of the tomb excavations and contents; details of the three bundles of bamboo slips that contain parallel material to the extant recensions of the Laozi and their textual significance; early discussions of a short, heretofore unknown text included in bundle 3, ''Vast Unity Generates Water'' (Taiyi shengshui); and it concludes with Edmund Ryden's critical edition of the texts contained in the three bundles.