No More Learning

For much of the first part of the course, my students and I engaged in many traditional academic exercises: books to read, classroom discussions, papers to be written, and multiple quizzes and exams. During the last month and a half of the course, the students and I collectively designed and executed a cam- puswide ritual event known as Dao Day. This involved an eclectic assortment of carnivalesque activities, culminating in a ritual procession through the cam- pus, a communal meal, and an actual Daoist spring ceremony performed by Master Hsuan Yuan, a Lungmen Daoist priest from the North Pole Gold temple in New York City--ably assisted, I should note, by a student dressed resplendently in a Disney Pooh Bear costume. The climax of these joyfully peculiar events came at the conclusion of Master Hsuan Yuan's ritual perfor-
my way: teaching the daode jing 123
mance, when a gigantic papier-ma^che ? Cosmic Egg/Gourd/Lump started to quake and, amid sound, smoke, and light, split open. Gloriously emerging from the embryonic shards came the Old Boy himself--Laozi in this case being played by a diminutive but athletic Korean American student dressed in sagely drag and wearing the enigmatic ''Dao Socks of Mystery. '' After several cart- wheels and back flips, the Old Boy proceeded to lecture the assembled multi- tude with the five thousand characters of the Daode jing--an oration delivered entirely in Korean! So at the end of the day, it was clear that the Dao that can be spoken is certainly not the Dao. But as Laozi once said: ''Small people can only laugh when encountering the Dao for the first time. '' Ritually and communally speaking, we had all on that day surely released the spirit of the Dao at Lehigh University.
Even more important for me personally and for my teaching than the ''Daoist Phantasmagoria'' was the dawning realization over the years that I had found my own disciplined rite of ''one pointedness. '' There were times, in other words, when I had entered into the empty abyss of the gourd and experienced, to borrow from Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi, a flowing state when I was no longer thinking or acting. I am alluding here to my own regular practice of the disciplined rituals of embodied language. I mean, of course, the path of writing which in the early 1990s, after a two-year period of intense full-time devotion to the writing of an impossibly long manuscript coming at the culmination of many years of painful preparation (that is, The Victorian Translation of China, which finally appeared in 2002 after more than fifteen years of work), led to my own small transformative epiphany of bodily, in- tellectual, and spiritual alchemy. Solve et coagula.
It was the ritual discipline, the struggle, the pain, the difficulty of working with the ''flesh of language,'' the deep ''fetal breathing'' of periodic inspiration, and the gradual development of a habitual, and always imperfect, art of writing (no matter what the subject) that led me to a further conviction about teaching Daoism and the Daode jing. 25 The Dao that can be Dao'ed is not the Dao, but at the same time, the ''invariant'' or Great Dao will only be reached through the assiduous work of grappling with the Dao's embodied forms. It was my reali- zation, therefore, that out of a spirit of Dao'ed timeliness and situational, or ying-ing, responsiveness to my own immediate pedagogical circumstances, the better way to teach the ritually pragmatic art of the Dao to students was to build on our shared academic and personal struggles with the practice and experi- ence of writing. It is in this sense that my commitment to teaching the Daode jing and Daoism as part of a writing-intensive seminar became obsessional.
This newfound passion for the revelatory linkages of writing-ritual- meditational experience-alchemical transformation has led to the incorporation
124 recent scholarship and teaching the daode jing
of various supplementary course materials on these themes (such as a reading Lu Ji's ''The Art of Writing''/Wen Fu, Csikszentmihalyi's Flow, and selections from Steven Nachmanovitch's Free Play). 26 But most of all, I stress the dis- cipline of regular short free-form reflective writing assignments and the central role of the ongoing rituals of revision in dealing with the mysteries of the interactions of style and content, form and thought, in the Dao-ing of a more formal essay. Along with this commitment to the disciplined rites of writing as a way to creep up on the Invariant Way, I also had the good fortune at this time of discovering a work that, as a necessary complement to my emphasis on the Dao of Writing, masterfully taught a kind of Dao of Reading as associated with the Daode jing. I refer here to my use of, and enthusiasm for, Michael LaFargue's new (1992) translation and commentary on the Laozi entitled The Dao of the Daode jing. There are several aspects to this work that make it, in my estimation, one of the best ways to read, understand, and teach the Daode jing. It is curiously revealing that part of the success of LaFargue's approach to the text seems to derive from the fact that he was working as an outsider to the conventional sinological tradition of translation and analysis. LaFargue therefore shows us that an application of biblical methods of her- meneutics gives serious students a practical method for working through the literary forms of the text to some informed interpretive judgments, while keeping in balance the text's historical ''meanings for them'' and its con- temporary ''meanings for us. ''27
My Way after the Turn of the Century
The ''Daoist Phantasmagoria'' and Dao Day are behind me now, never to be done again. Such unconventional exercises in the ''deep play'' of ritual are too personally exhausting and too publicly frightening to sustain. But life goes on and my quasi-ritualized teaching of Daoism and the Daode jing continues, although in a somewhat less frantic way. What gives me heart to go forward is the feeling that I am finally learning, after some thirty years of effort, how to teach this text and the Daoist tradition. Not that these feelings themselves will not, in time, change, since that is the nature of the Dao and its power. Along with experimental courses on American visionary folk art and something deeply disturbing called ''Jesus, Buddha, Mao, and Elvis,'' I want very much to teach a semester-long course devoted to Daoism and that other important American New Age religion of salvational environmentalism, interests that have been sparked by my involvement in a recent conference at Harvard University and the publication of a book entitled Daoism and Ecology, Ways
my way: teaching the daode jing 125
within a Cosmic Landscape. Related to these concerns is my desire to also de- velop a new course exclusively devoted to the emergence of a full-fledged ''American Daoism'': embryonic developments that draw upon the Poohish Daoism discussed here but also more significantly refer to various Daoist groups in North America and the beguiling neo-Daoist writings of the novelist Ursula Le Guin. In this respect it is worth noting that there is an important new resource for reflecting on, and teaching about, the Western appropriation of Daoism: J. J. Clarke's engaging overview of the Western romance with Daoism entitled The Tao of the West: Western Transformations of Taoist Thought. 28
In the meantime, I am encouraged that my regular writing-intensive Daoist seminar still displays some strong qi. The last time I taught the course, I had one of the most invigorating and rewarding seminars of my teaching career. Not only was I blessed with a diverse lot of bright and energetic students, but (for whatever subtle alchemical reasons) the discussions and student pa- pers were also unusually interesting and stimulating. Even better was that the course seemed to engender some healthy appreciation for the Dao of Reading and Writing, as well as some recognition of the importance of the kind of foolish ritual behavior elicited during the events of Dao Day. The culminating oral presentations and papers that grew out of this seminar were wonderfully eclectic and creative, covering such topics as the political philosophy in the Daode jing, the Tao of the Matrix films, a hip-hop rap composition based on chapter 2 of the Zhuangzi, the relation between mathematical chaos theory and some themes in the early Daoist texts, and finally (and always a crowd pleaser) Daoist sexual alchemy. Moreover, I did not receive any seminar papers that attempted the strategy of unadulterated emptiness or transparent defecation. Shit didn't happen! For that I am thankful. So goes the Dao.
notes
1. Along with Elvis Presley, spam, and pornography, one of the more ubiquitous subjects on the Internet (and on T-shirts) is the comparative listing of different world religions that begins with the taken-for-granted association of Daoism and the slogan ''Shit happens. '' This cow pat of popular American urban legend most dramatically surfaced in the hugely successful film Forrest Gump. We may only speculate that this quasi-proverbial saying probably stems from some half-remembered appreciation of the famous ''piss and shit'' passage in the Zhuangzi. The passage is found in chapter 22, which in Burton Watson's translation is as follows:
Master Tung-kuo asked Chuang Tzu, ''This thing called the Way--where does it exist? '' Chuang Tzu said, ''There's no place it doesn't exist. '' ''Come,'' said Master Tung-kuo, ''you must be more specific! '' ''It is in the ant. '' ''As low a thing as that? '' ''It is in the panic grass. '' ''But that's lower still! '' ''It is in the
126 recent scholarship and teaching the daode jing
tiles and shards. '' ''How can it be so low? '' ''It is in the piss and shit! '' Master Tung-kuo made no reply.
Burton Watson, trans. , The Complete Works of Chuang Tzu (New York: Columbia University Press, 1968), 240-241.
2. See the Zhuangzi, chapter 2.
3. On some of the contemporary Daoist practitioners in North America, see Solala Towler, A Gathering of Cranes: Bring the Dao to the West (Eugene, Oreg. : Abode of the Eternal Dao, 1996). On Saso, see his The Teachings of Master Chuang (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1978); and on Schipper, see N. J. Girardot, ''Kristopher Schipper and the Resurrection of the Daoist Body,'' in The Taoist Body, by Kristofer Schipper (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1993).
4. On the recent history of Daoism, see, among other works, K. Schipper, ''The History of Daoist Studies in Europe,'' in Europe Studies China: Papers from an Inter- national Conference on the History of European Sinology, ed. Ming Wilson and John Cayley (London: Han-Shan Tang Books, 1995), 467- 491; Anna Seidel, ''Chronicle of Daoist Studies in the West,'' Cahiers d'Extreme-Asie 5(1990): 223-347; and N. J. Gir- ardot, ''Chinese Religion: History of Study,'' in Encyclopedia of Religions 3 (1987): 312- 323 and ''Finding the Way: James Legge and the Victorian Invention of Taoism,'' Religion 29 (1999): 107-121.
5. See, for example, Philip Zaleski's review of the reprinted work by Alan Watts, Zen and the Beat Way (Boston: Charles E. Tuttle, 1997) in the New York Times Book Review, September 9, 1997, 46. As Zaleski correctly notes:
Our knowledge of Asian religions has come a long way since the 60's, and it's obvious now that in many ways Watts got his facts about as wrong as is humanly possible. His gaffes make one gasp: that Eastern religions ''do not involve belief,'' that they offer no ethical codes, that ''what they are concerned with is not ideas,'' that they contain little worship, that their rites are not ''very essential. '' In lieu of the dazzling reality of these faiths, with their elaborate rituals, complex devotions and strenuous discipline, Watts creates a fantastic theme park, where wise old sages down bottles of sake, spin out haiku and whack one another with sticks in displays of crazy wisdom.
See also the defense of Watts's ''fundamental Buddhism'' in the letter by Sergei Heurlin, New York Times Book Review, October 12, 1997, 4. For scholarly discussions of these issues, see the works by Donald Lopez, especially Curators of the Buddha: The Study of Buddhism under Colonialism (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1995) and Prisoners of Shangri-la: Tibetan Buddhism and the West (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1998).
6. Even a recent ''Gospel of Elvis'' alludes to Daoism. See Louie Ludwig, The Gospel of Elvis: The Testament and Apocrypha of the Greater Themes of ''The King'' (Ar- lington, Texas: Summit, 1994). Most egregiously, see David Rosen's The Tao of Elvis (New York: Harvest, 2002).
7. Most problematic is Mitchell's presumption that his experience with Zen meditation gave him some unique and seamless insight into the inner ''perennial
my way: teaching the daode jing 127
philosophy'' embedded in the ancient Daoist text. It should also be noted that it is not always the philologically sophisticated sinological scholar that is able to produce a good translation. This is demonstrated by the infamous ''Philological Notes on Chapter One of the Lao Tzu'' by the formidable sinologist, Peter A. Boodberg,
in Harvard Journal of Asiatic Studies 20 (1959): 598-618. For all of his erudition, Boodberg managed to produce a ''translation'' that amounted to almost total gibberish.
8. See N. Sivin, ''On the Word 'Taoist' as a Source of Perplexity: With Special Reference to the Relations of Science and Religion in Traditional China,'' History of Religions 17 (1978): 303-330. See also Russell Kirkland's acerbic ''The Taoism of the Western Imagination and the Daoism of China: De-Colonizing the Exotic Teachings of the East, unpublished lecture, University of Tennessee, 1997.
See also Steven Bradbury, ''The American Conquest of Philosophical Daoism,'' in Translation East and West: A Cross-Cultural Approach, ed. Cornelia N. Moore
and Lucy Lower (Honolulu: University of Hawaii, College of Languages, 1992), 29- 41.
9. See, for example, Livia Kohn's The Daoist Experience: An Anthology (Albany: State University of New York Press, 1993); Eva Wong's Shambhala Guide to Daoism (Boston: Shambhala, 1997); and Steven Bokenkamp's Early Daoist Scriptures (Berke- ley: University of California Press, 1997). On the scholarship surrounding the Daode jing, see Livia Kohn and Michael LaFargue, eds. , Lao Tzu and the Tao-te-ching (Albany: State University of New York Press, 1998).
10. See James Miller's Daoism: A Short Introduction (Oxford: Oneworld, 2002); Livia Kohn's Daoism and Chinese Culture (Cambridge, Mass. : Three Pines Press, 2001); and the forthcoming work by Russell Kirkland, Taoism: The Enduring Tradition (New York: Routledge).
11. The first edition of Thompson's Chinese Religion: An Introduction appeared in 1969. For a discussion of the pedagogical and cultural significance of this book, see N. J. Girardot, '' 'Very Small Books about Very Large Subjects': A Prefatory Appreciation of the Enduring Legacy of Laurence G. Thompson's Chinese Religion. An Introduction,'' Journal of Chinese Religions 20 (fall 1992): 9-15.
12. Some of these issues as they relate to the nineteenth century are treated in my The Victorian Translation of China: James Legge's Oriental Pilgrimage (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2002).
13. Concerning my association with Eliade and my growing estrangement from him in the 1980s, see my ''Whispers and Smiles: Nostalgic Reflections on Mircea Eliade's Significance for the Study of Religion,'' in Changing Religious Worlds: The Meaning and End of Mircea Eliade, ed. Bryan Rennie (Albany: State University of New York Press, 2000), 143-164.
14. See my discussion of these issues in ''Part of the Way: Four Studies on Taoism,'' History of Religions 11 (1972): 319-337.
15. On the multiple translations of the Daode jing, see Knut Walf, Westliche Taoismus-Bibliographie: Western Bibliography of Taoism (Essen, Germany: Verlag Die Blaue Eule, 1992).
128 recent scholarship and teaching the daode jing
16. On the Jungian cult, see Richard Noll, The Aryan Christ: The Secret Life of Carl Jung (New York: Random House, 1997); and especially J. J. Clarke's Jung and Eastern Thought: A Dialogue with the Orient (London: Routledge, 1994).
17. On the liberal Protestant paradigm (and its accompanying anti-Catholicism) as applied to Daoism and other Chinese religions, see my Victorian Translation of China. See also Gregory Schopen, ''Archaeology and Protestant Presuppositions in the Study of Indian Buddhism,'' History of Religions 31 (1991): 1-23.
18. The daunting nature of this situation is suggested by Isabelle Robinet's evocative description of the amazingly heterogeneous Daozang:
The existing Daoist canon . . . , which was first issued in 1442, contains more than a thousand works. It simultaneously gathers together works by philos- ophers like Lao-tzu and Chuang-tzu; pharmacopoeial treatises; the oldest Chinese medical treatise; hagiographies; immense ritual texts laced with magic; imaginary geographies; dietetic and hygienic recipes; anthologies and hymns; speculations on the diagrams of the I ching; meditation techniques; alchemical texts; and moral tracts. One finds both the best and the worst within the canon. But it is exactly this state of affairs that constitutes its richness.
Isabelle Robinet, Daoist Meditation: The Mao-shan Tradition of Great Purity, trans. Julian Pas and N. J. Girardot (Albany: State University of New York Press, 1993).
19. See Girardot, The Victorian Translation of China.
20. I no longer have the exact reference for Reagan's use of the Daode jing. I think it may have been mentioned in an article in the New York Times describing the amazing six-figure advance given to Stephen Mitchell for his rendition of the Daode jing.
21. See Patricia Leigh Brown's ''Peace Is a Bookshelf Away: Benjamin Hoff's Pooh-as-Daoist Joins a Genre That Combines Self-help with Spiritual Discovery,'' New York Times, November 19, 1992.
22. Myth and Meaning was first published by the University of California Press in 1983, with a corrected paperback printing in 1988 (the connection with chaos theory was discussed in my preface to the paperback edition).
23. Such is the subtitle of Goodspeed's Dao Jones Averages, a work that is replete with the secret stock market wisdom of the amazingly adaptable Daode jing.
24. See Schipper's suggestive discussion of some of these matters in The Taoist Body, 183-216; see also John Lagerwey, Daoist Ritual in Chinese Society and History (New York: Macmillan, 1987), ix-xvi, 241-290. For some of the problems associated with the use of the category of mysticism, see the general discussion in the Harper- Collins Dictionary of Religion (San Francisco: HarperSanFrancisco, 1995), 747-749.
25. I borrow the phrase ''the flesh of language'' from David Abram's meditation on the ecology of language, The Spell of the Sensuous: Perception and Language in a More-Than-Human World (New York: Vintage Books, 1996), 73.
26. For Lu Ji's essay, see Tony Barstone and Chou Ping, trans. , The Art of Writing: Teachings of the Chinese Masters (Boston: Shambhala, 1996). See also Stephen
my way: teaching the daode jing 129
Nachmanovitch, Free Play: The Power of Improvisation in Life and the Arts (New York: G. P. Putnam's Sons, 1990) and Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi's Flow: The Psychology of Optimal Experience (New York: Harper & Row, 1990).
27. For LaFargue's hermeneutical method as applied to the Daode jing, see The Dao of the Daode jing: A Translation and Commentary (Albany: State University of New York Press, 1992), 190-213 (''Hermeneutics: A Reasoned Approach to Interpreting the Daode jing''). The literary forms include what LaFargue calls ''polemic aphorisms'' and ''self-cultivation sayings. '' In his discussion of the ''origin sayings'' (a subset of the self-cultivation sayings), LaFargue suggests that some scholars (hinting at my Myth and Meaning) misconstrue these passages as instructions about cosmogonic and metaphysical theories which are then used by Daoists to ''build the rest of their thought and their approach to practical problems'' (207). Let me take this opportunity to say that my point of view about the cosmogonic implications of some of the passages and images in the Daode jing is not so far removed from LaFargue's idea that these passages are basically ''celebratory'' in nature--that is, that these passages cel- ebrate ''the existentially 'foundational' character of Dao as concretely experienced in the self-cultivation practice of the ideal Laoist'' (208). It is worth mentioning that another excellent recent translation is Stephen Addiss and Stanley Lombardo, Daode jing Lao-Tzu (Indianapolis: Hackett, 1993). In the past few years, numerous other translations (good and otherwise) have appeared. Moreover, there is also the recent excitement of the discovery of the oldest extant version of the Daode jing, the so-called Guodian text. See, for example, The Guodian Laozi: Proceedings of the International Conference, Dartmouth College, May 1998, Early China Special Monograph Series, No. 5, edited by Sarah Allan and Crispin Williams. For a translation of the text, see Robert Henricks, Lao Tzu's Tao Te Ching (New York: Columbia University Press, 2000).
28. See also the critical appraisal of Clarke's work in the symposium ''The Tao of the West: Western Transformations of Taoist Thought,'' in Religious Studies Review 28 (2002): 303-338 (commentary by N. Girardot, Julia Hardy, Russell Kirkland, Elijah Siegler, James Miller, Jonathan Herman, Jeffrey Dippmann, Louis Komjathy, and J. J. Clarke).
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? The Reception of Laozi
Livia Kohn
In teaching Daoism, one of the key texts that is usually discussed early in the class is the Daode jing, also known as the Laozi after its alleged author. The text, which in its standard version consists of eighty-one chapters and is divided into two parts, is highly philo- sophical and inspiring and has been translated into English numer- ous times. As likely as not, students are already familiar with it and may even own one or the other translation. From reading it--and from popular citations and adaptations made of it, such as the famous Tao of Pooh--students in close imitation of mainstream America have gained the idea that Daoism is all about going along with the flow, living in harmony with nature, acting by not acting, cultivating qui- etude and spontaneity, and generally being a nonachieving, nature- loving kind of person. It typically comes as somewhat of a shock to them to learn that there are some serious historical realities in the background of the book, that not everyone reads it in the same, Americanized way, that translations differ considerably in wording and outlook, and that there is an entire two-thousand-year-long reli- gious tradition called Daoism, in which the text has played an im- portant and often devotional role, being used both in communal ritual and in personal cultivation.
The first reception of Laozi, therefore, that our students tend to be already familiar with is the reception of the text Laozi as scripture, that is, as something of eternal value that can and must be adapted to one's own particular circumstances and interpreted accordingly. As
132 recent scholarship and teaching the daode jing
Michael LaFargue has described it, this reception focuses on the idea that the text has something important to say to the present-day reader. 1 The main problem to be overcome, then, is the apparent cultural distance between this reader and the ancient writing, the best way of bringing the text into the modern world and making it into a document addressing questions of most interest today. A given interpretation is most successful if it allows the reader to find in the text something stimulating, moving, or inspiring. While this ap- proach is perfectly valid and should be discussed in the classroom, we as ed- ucators also have the task to inform students about the historical realities surrounding the text. At this point three different topics emerge as central to the discussion: the concrete, textual unfolding of the work; the historical reality surrounding its conception; and the text's role in the later religious tradition.
First, the concrete, textual history of the work includes a discussion of the three major editions of the work. Among them is most prominently the so- called standard edition, also known as the transmitted edition. Handed down by Chinese copyists over the ages, it is at the root of almost all translations of the text. It goes back to the third century c. e. , to the erudite Wang Bi (226-249), who edited the text and wrote a commentary on it that Chinese since then have considered inspired. It has shaped the reception of the text's worldview until today.
A somewhat earlier edition is called the Mawangdui version, named after a place in southern China (Hunan) where a tomb was excavated in 1973 that dated from 168 b. c. e. It contained an undisturbed coffin surrounded by numerous artifacts and several manuscripts written on silk, mostly dealing with cosmology and longevity techniques, such as gymnastics and sexual practices. Among them were two copies of the Daode jing. The Mawangdui version differs little from the transmitted edition: there are some character variants that have helped clarify some interpretive points, and the two parts are in reversed order; that is, the text begins with the section on De, then adds the section on Dao. The manuscripts are important because they show that the Daode jing existed in its complete form in the early Han dynasty, and that it was considered essential enough to be placed in someone's grave. 2
Yet another important edition of the Daode jing was discovered in 1993 in a place called Guodian (Hubei). Written on bamboo slips and dated to about 300 b. c. e. , the find presents a collection of various philosophical works of the time, including fragments of Confucian and other texts. Among them are thirty-three passages that can be matched with thirty-one chapters of the Daode jing, but with lines in different places and considerable variation in characters. Generally, they are concerned with self-cultivation and its application to questions of rulership and the pacification of the state. Polemical attacks against Confucian
virtues, such as those describing them as useless or even harmful (chapters 18- 19), are not found; instead negative attitudes and emotions are criticized. The Guodian find of this so-called Bamboo Laozi tells us that in the late fourth century b. c. e. the text existed in rudimentary form and consisted of a collection of sayings not yet edited into a coherent presentation. Another text found at Guodian, the Taiyi sheng shui (Great Unity Creates Water), gives further in- sights into the growing and possibly even ''Daoist'' cosmology of the time, as does a contemporaneous work on self-cultivation, the ''Inward Training'' (Neiye) chapter of the Guanzi. It appears that, gradually, a set of ideas and practices was growing that would eventually develop into something specifi- cally and more religiously Daoist. 3
In describing and discussing the textual history, instructors must make it clear that the Daode jing was not naturally standardized, but that the standard version evolved over time, from a rudimentary form found at Guodian through the first fairly complete texts at Mawangdui to the standard edition of Wang Bi in the third century c. e. , which did not arise until six centuries after the text's first conception. This standardization, moreover, depended on what the Chi- nese of that age considered valuable and relevant. Prior to Wang Bi--and less so but still even after him4--the Daode jing was a text in flux, consisting of mis- cellaneous sayings in various stages of coherent collation that were changed, rearranged, and reinterpreted many times. Especially the new Guodian find is of importance here, because it shows the context of the work as part of the educational repertoire of a southern crown prince, used--at least as much as we can tell so far--together with philosophical works of other schools to give the next ruler the best possible education for his future responsibilities. 5
Another topic is the historical reality surrounding the text's creation, the environment of Warring States China, as well as the wider perspective of world history. In this context it is helpful to students to point out that both the person and the text Laozi arose around 500 b. c. e. in a period of great change not only in China but the world over. The German philosopher Karl Jaspers called this period the ''axial age'' in his seminal work The Origin and Goal of History. The term refers to the fact that at this time in many different cultures new thinkers and religious leaders arose who, for the first time, placed great emphasis on the individual as opposed to the community of the clan or tribe. Examples include the Buddha in India, Zoroaster in Persia, Socrates in an- cient Greece, and Confucius in China. The ideas proposed by these thinkers and religious leaders had a strong and pervasive impact on the thinking of humanity in general, contributing significantly to our thinking even today.
Students should understand that no document arises in a historical vac- uum. They need to see how China at this time was undergoing tremendous
the reception of laozi 133
134 recent scholarship and teaching the daode jing
economic and political changes. The arrival of iron-age technology, and with it better ploughshares, wagon axles, and weapons, had caused an increase in food production and massive population growth, as well as greater mobility and wealth among the people. This in turn led to a heightened hunger for power among local lords, who began to wage wars in order to expand their lands and increase their influence, setting large infantry armies against each other. While the central king of the Zhou dynasty (1122-221 b. c. e. ) was still officially in charge of the entire country, there were in fact many independent states in a more or less constant state of conflict. The period is thus appro- priately named the Warring States (zhanguo). It was a time of unrest and transition which left many people yearning for the peace and stability of old, and ended only with the violent conquest of all other states and the estab- lishment of the Chinese empire by the Qin dynasty in 221 b. c. e.
Most Chinese philosophers of the Warring States, in accordance with the situation they faced, were concerned with the proper ''way'' or ''method'' (dao) leading to the recovery of the harmony and social manageability of an earlier, golden age. The word dao was accordingly not limited to one specific school but arose as a generic term used by all philosophers, so generic, in fact, that A. C. Graham entitled his work on early Chinese philosophy Disputers of the Dao. The works of the ancient Chinese philosophers can thus be described as characterized by a strong backward focus and feudalistic vision. Although Western scholars usually characterize them as ''philosophers,'' they always placed a strong emphasis on the practical dimensions of their teachings, both in regard to the individual's social behavior and to his or her personal self- cultivation. In fact, at the core of most ancient Chinese thought are practices of social discipline and the transformation of individuals and communities. Followers often congregated in small, almost sectarian groups rather than in what we think of as philosophical schools. 6
This phase of the discussion of the text also lends itself most opportunely to an introduction of the basic history and doctrines of Confucianism as a comparative backdrop. It can be emphasized here that, while the quest for harmony and political stability was equally at the root of philosophers' efforts, early Confucians focused predominantly on the idea of ritual formality or etiquette (li), the proper behavior in all social situations. This social formality was to be observed on all three levels of life: in family and society, in gov- ernment, and in religious ritual. It meant the guidance toward proper behavior among people of different rank and status, defined through the five rela- tionships of ruler-minister, father-son, husband-wife, elder-younger brother, and friend-friend. In each case, there was a senior and a junior, and each had obligations toward the other, expressed in the so-called Confucian virtues. 7
This social focus and emphasis on set behavior patterns, then, can be con- trasted effectively with the doctrines of ziran and wuwei in the Daode jing.
An aspect students should be made aware of is the role of the text in the later religious tradition, and especially its importance in Daoist ritual. As early as the first century b. c. e. , the Daode jing was considered a sacred text that should be recited to the greater benefit of self and state. By the second century c. e. , it was the central text of the Celestial Masters, who recited it regularly both as a devotional exercise and for its magical effect. To ensure the proper efficacy of this recitation, practitioners had to be morally pure. Accordingly, the Ce- lestial Masters also used it as the inspiration for certain behavioral rules. These rules are connected with the Xianger commentary to the Daode jing, a text that survives among the manuscripts found at Dunhuang. Attributed to Zhang Lu, third Celestial Master and grandson of the founder Zhang Daoling, who lived in the early third century, it describes the contemporaneous interpretation of the text. The precepts listed here are of two kinds: a group of nine precepts providing general rules of behavior based on the philosophy of the Daode jing, and a group of twenty-seven precepts, which present a mixture of general rules, behavioral regulations, and temporal taboos. 8
In the fifth century, recitation of the Daode jing was widely practiced among Daoist schools and linked closely with the attainment of immortality. As such, it appears in the Wenshi neizhuan (Inner Biography of the Master at the Beginning of the Scripture), a sixth-century hagiography of Laozi that tells of his transmission of the Daode jing to Yin Xi, the Guardian of the Pass--a tale symptomatic for the idealized relationship between master and disciple in the religion. At first Laozi rejects Yin Xi's demand to join him on his further travels, saying:
In order to follow me, you first have to attain the Dao. But your many impurities are not eradicated yet, so how can you follow me on my distant wanderings? For the present, recite the ''Text in Two Sec- tions'' [the Daode jing] ten thousand times. Then your Dao will be perfected and you can follow me on my distant wanderings. 9
Yin Xi did as he was ordered and recited the Daode jing ten thousand times over a period of three years. As a result, he ''gained eternal life and the state of no death. '' According to another source, he ''attained inner sincerity in his essence and pervasion in his meditation so that he could pervade the mystery,'' as the Xisheng jing (Scripture of Western Ascension, DZ 726) states (1. 11ab).
That this practice and its effect was not merely part of mythology is evidenced in the Zhen'gao (Declarations of the Perfected, DZ 1016), a record of Daoist teachings and practices dated to around the year 500. According to
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this, a certain Old Lord instructed three members of the Zhou family, the father and two sons, to recite the Daode jing. The father and elder brother succeeded in reciting the text ten thousand times and flew off as celestials. The younger brother, however, reached only 9,733 times and did not attain immortality (5. 6a).
In addition, the Daode jing also stood at the center of a ritualized medi- tation. According to a fifth-century text that survived in Duhuang and served as a preface to the text, the Daode zhenjing xujue (Introductory Explanations to the Daode jing), Laozi gave detailed instructions on how to properly venerate the scripture. Adepts should purify themselves thoroughly and enter a special meditation chamber, where they burn incense, straighten their robes, bow to the ten directions, and actively visualize Laozi and his major assistants.
Only in the venerable presence of these divine personages is the Daode jing to be opened. Its recitation must further be preceded by a formal prayer, by which the adept calls upon the Lord of the Niwan Palace, the central repre- sentative of the gods and resident in the central palace of the head, to descend. As the divinity approaches, the room undergoes mysterious changes: a radiance as of seven jewels spreads, doors and windows open spontaneously. A link of light to the higher spheres is thus established, through which the practitioner floats up and away into the purple empyrean. Finding himself among the stars, he has the sun and moon at his sides and approaches the divine immortals to gain immortality for himself--and not only for himself but also for his an- cestors of seven generations.
After this invocation, when the adept has placed himself firmly among the celestials, he proceeds with the ritual. The text says:
Finish the recitation, then clap your teeth and swallow your saliva thirty-six times. Visualize the green dragon to your left, the white tiger to your right, the red bird in front of you, and the dark warrior at your back.
Your feet stand between the eight trigrams, the divine turtle and the thirty-six masters bow to you. In front, you see the seventeen stars, while your five inner organs give forth the five energies and a network pattern streams across your body.
On three sides you are joined by an attendant, each having a retinue of a thousand carriages and ten thousand horsemen. Eight thousand jade maidens and jade lads of heaven and earth stand guard for you. (sect. 5)
Clapping one's teeth and swallowing saliva are part of the standard Daoist meditation ritual, symbolic forms of announcing one's communication with
the deities. The adept is instructed to place himself in the cosmic center by seeing himself surrounded by the four mythical animals of the four direc- tions, representing constellations in the sky, and placing his feet firmly on the eight trigrams of the Yijing (Book of Changes). Everyone bows to him, and he is fully established among the stars; his body has become a pure constellation of light and energy patterns. Then he sees himself supported by attendants, one on each side and behind him, who in turn, as in an imperial procession, are joined by thousands of followers and servants. Now that the celestial position of the meditator at the center of the cosmos is firmly established, he can recite the Daode jing in its truest environment and to its greatest effect. 10
Over the following centuries, the Daode jing continued to be actively used both in meditation and liturgy and played an important role in the formal ordination of priests, representing a level of advanced lay followers who were preparing to leave the householder's life but had not yet done so. Their progress was divided into two stages. First, he or she--women being treated as equals in the priestly system--learned basic meditation and recitation techniques, worshipped Laozi and Yin Xi as their major patriarchs, and ob- served ten precepts that included five basic rules against killing, stealing, lying, sexual misconduct, and intoxication, together with a set of guidelines to help practitioners to live in harmony with their families and their commu- nities, striving for the liberation and salvation of all beings.
Second, they took additional precepts and received more detailed instruc- tions on the Daode jing, undergoing an ordination ceremony that named them Gaoxuan fashi or Preceptors of Eminent Mystery and bestowed upon them a variety of exegetical, devotional, and technical materials linked with the text. These included early commentaries on the Daode jing, technical interpretations of the text, philosophical and mystical exegeses, practical manuals on Daode jing meditation and ritual, and formal hagiographies of Laozi and Yin Xi. 11 The importance of the Daode jing as a sacred scripture in priestly and monastic ordination continues to the present day. It is one of the texts chanted at reli- gious services in the Complete Perfection (Quanzhen) school, handed to or- dinands at the time of first initiation together with a set of ten precepts and certain guidelines for self-cultivation. The Daode jing as much as the figure of Laozi have inspired seekers of self-cultivation, and numerous meditation techniques through history as well as Qigong methods of recent years have appeared in their name. 12
Discussing these topics with students and placing the text in its larger historical and ritual context will inevitably lead into the reception of Laozi the person, a figure typically thought of as a contemporary of Confucius. Based on an account of his person in the Shiji, he is typically described as a learned and
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somewhat reclusive official at the Zhou court, where he served as an archivist. His first call to fame came when Confucius, eager to expand his knowledge of the ancient rites, went to the Zhou capital to consult him. Lao Dan, instead of imparting his wisdom, put Confucius down, advising him to forget all about things to cram into his head and instead to let go of everything and follow the natural way. Confucius, stunned for several days, finally emerged with the verdict that he had met many impressive people in his day but none like Lao Dan, who was ''truly like a dragon,'' free from all constraints and powerfully soaring in the sky. Laozi's second call to fame came when he decided to emigrate because nothing much good was going to come of the Zhou dynasty anymore. Stopped by the Guardian of the Pass, he was compelled to spell out his ideas and thus, under some duress, wrote the Daode jing.
As A. C. Graham has shown, this image is largely legendary, the figure Laozi being originally a Confucian creation, used to show the master's hu- mility and eagerness to learn. The hoary master was then taken over by the growing ''Daoist'' school when it needed a respectable founder in the fourth century b. c. e. Presented to the conquering Qin rulers as a powerful political thinker of unusual longevity in the third century b. c. e. , Laozi was then re- moved from the scene by the story of his western emigration, which conve- niently also accounted for the compilation of the Daode jing. Under the Han, finally, when the close connection to the Qin turned problematic, Laozi's birthplace was located at Bozhou (Henan) near the Han rulers' homeland of Pei, and he was linked with the Li clan, a family of loyal Han retainers. 13
While Laozi the man remains shrouded in the mists of early history and legend, Laozi the god has been a significant and dominant figure in the religion from the Han dynasty to the present day. In the Han dynasty, he was divinized through adoption by three separate groups:
1. The magical practitioners (fangshi) or individual seekers of immortal- ity, who saw in him the patriarch of their arts and idealized him as an immortal.
2. The political elite, that is, the imperial family and court officials, who found in Laozi the personification of the Dao and worshiped him as a representative of their ideal of cosmic and political unity along- side the Yellow Emperor (Huangdi) and the Buddha and engraved inscriptions to this effect.
3. Popular, millenarian cults, who identified Laozi as the god who manifested himself through the ages and would save the world yet again and bring about the age of Great Peace (Taiping). Called Ve- nerable Lord (Laojun) or Yellow Venerable Lord (Huanglao jun), this
deified Laozi was like the personification of cosmic harmony wor- shipped by the court but equipped with tremendous revolutionary power. As a messiah, he could overturn the present and reorganize the world, leading the faithful to a new state of heavenly bliss in this very life on earth.
Through this adaptation of Laozi as a deity of these various groups, his biography changed into a hagiography, the mythical life of a cosmic saint. He was described as fully identical with the Dao, the creator of the entire world, and the ever newly appearing savior of the world, the so-called teacher of dynasties. His birth on this earth as Laozi was embellished by increasing his time in the womb to eighty-one years and giving him the physiognomy of a sage. His life after his western emigration was also elaborated, so that he was either said to have wandered west and converted the barbarians to his teaching, which duly became known as Buddhism, or believed to have ascended back to heaven and returned variously to reveal the different Daoist teachings in China.
The result is a highly complex Laozi myth, which describes his super- natural existence in six distinct parts or phases:
1. Laozi as the Dao creates the universe (creation).
2. Laozi descends as the teacher of dynasties (transformations).
3. Laozi is born on earth and serves as an archivist under the Zhou
(birth).
4. Laozi emigrates and transmits the Daode jing to Yin Xi (transmission). 5. Laozi and Yin Xi go west and convert the barbarians to Buddhism
(conversion).
6. Laozi ascends to heaven and comes back again to give revelations to
Chinese seekers, founding Daoist schools (revelations).
This fully developed myth appears first in the fifth century, then is further elaborated in more extensive details until a high point is reached during the Song dynasty, when three major hagiographies appear that each encompass many chapters in the Daoist canon and include and systematize all previous information on the god. 14 Aside from these, there were also many shorter works of Laozi. He is further mentioned in countless passages in Daoist texts, and large numbers of scriptures are claimed to go back to his revelations. To the present day, he plays an active role in the Daoist religion as the sponsor of new methods of Qigong and a key deity of both major Daoist schools, the Celestial Masters and Complete Perfection.
To bring these intricate and complex historical facts to our students is not an easy task. Students often resist the debunking of their ideas and reject the
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religious dimensions of a text and a figure that they have learned to associate with personal philosophy and a spontaneous way of life. 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. Even the early texts, interpreted largely as philosophical documents in aca- demia, are, as Harold Roth has shown convincingly, based on meditative and cultivation experiences and come from a distinctly religious context. To make the adjustment to this new view easier for students, it helps greatly to intro- duce comparative perspectives into the discussion.
For example, the phenomenon of mysticism is very helpful in placing the scriptural reception of the Daode jing, because it makes it clear that mystics of whatever tradition, like practicing Daoists, are primarily religious practitioners whose ideas are secondary to their experiences. In addition, Daoist seekers aim to undergo a transformation from ordinary life and perception to a more spiritual dimension in a threefold progress, which can be matched with the spiritual progress outlined in other traditions. Daoist transformation as un- derstood from reading the Laozi and Zhuangzi, then, begins first with the embrace of simplicity, both physical and mental, with the goal of ''seeing things as equal'' and ''having no one-sided feelings. '' This involves a withdrawal from ordinary sensory experience and a refocusing of one's goals, a tendency to ''diminish and again diminish'' (Daode jing), as opposed to the urge to accu- mulate things and grow bigger and better all the time.
Once the mind is emptied of worldly concerns, it is, in a second step, opened up to perceive the intricacies of Dao, filled anew with a more cosmic, flowing, and universal perspective. It comes to accept all things equally, to stand alone among the multitude, to appear stupid and simple where everyone else is bright and complex. This new vision in turn leads, third, to a complete letting go of all personality, to a merging with the ''Great Thoroughfare'' of the Dao, the attainment of nonaction in all aspects of life and thought, the reali- zation of perfect happiness and free and easy wandering. These three stages of withdrawal, openness, and merging with the Dao can then be compared, but of course never equalized, with the three mystical stages outlined by Evelyn Un- derhill on the basis of Christian writings: the purgative, where one eliminates old ideas and attachments; the illuminative, where one is filled with a new vision and complete focus on God; and the unitive, where one finds mystical union with the deity and enters a completely new life. 15 They can, moreover, be linked to other religions and their visions of spiritual attainment.
Then again, a discussion of the controversy surrounding the historical Jesus and his role in later Christianity may help to place the idea of Laozi as a
legendary figure and as a god into a wider and more familiar context. Here it may be pointed out that certain classical motifs of the hero myth appear in both figures' hagiographies, for example, the virgin birth, the rejection by the es- tablishment, the fight for their ideals, and the stylization as king over a vast empire (in Laozi's case, after his emigration). 16 Both figures, in addition, have become models for the believers of the religions that grew in their wake, giving people guidance and representing the ideals of the religion. The historical Jesus is often quite as unfathomable as the historical Laozi, and the veneration as savior has caused both figures to be stylized as immensely supernatural.
If students are not familiar with the debates surrounding the historical Jesus, the figure of Santa Claus might be a useful means of clarifying the legendary and divine status of Laozi. Most certainly, students are familiar with the common image of Santa Claus as a white-haired, chubby, and cheerful old man who makes toys galore, then rides around in a wondrous sled drawn by reindeer (some with red noses), and drops his gifts into the chimneys and stockings on Christmas morning. No student, I am sure, would assert that he is a fully real, historical figure, yet they all realize that Santa Claus is important in our culture today. It can be pointed out in class that there was in fact a historical person at the origin of our Santa Claus story, namely Saint Nicholas, a wealthy man from Asia Minor who gave away all his wealth to the poor, especially favoring children, and died a saint--his ascension day of December 6 be- coming a holy day in the Catholic Church. The story we know grew over the centuries on the basis of the historical facts, reaching a culminating point in the nineteenth century. Yet most people are totally unaware of them, and what is important for them is not the man, but the saint: the religiously stylized figure who represents more an idea than a real life.
On another note, teachers of Daoism profit greatly from firmly estab- lishing the idea that no religion ever is a unified and fully integrated entity. Just as there are many different forms of Buddhism, Islam, Judaism, and Chris- tianity; as all major religious traditions of the world have undergone serious schisms in their history; as they all are expressed in a multitude of forms, including mysticism, doctrine, philosophy, ritual, ordination hierarchies, and popular practices (even superstition)--so Daoism is a multifaceted tradition that has continued to reinvent itself ever since its first inception in the Warring States. It is unreasonable and unrealistic to demand of a Chinese tradition what no Western or other religion can deliver, and to pass judgment if it fails to do so. It is equally meaningless and even detrimental to understand modern Daoism or Daoism in the United States as a deviant and declined form of the tradition, when all we see here is just another way in which the tradition reinvents itself right under our eyes. On the contrary, encouraging students to actively seek out
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and engage themselves with these modern forms will increase their practical understanding of the religion and open their eyes to its historical forms, while also aiding their appreciation of its religious unfolding and growth in general.
In fact, the practical and contemporary dimension of Daoism can be regarded as another important teaching tool. Students tend to relish hands-on experiences and have a great deal more empathy for ideas and practices active in the here and now than those important in China fifteen hundred years ago. Showing the historical, scriptural, and devotional dimensions of Laozi the text and the personage together with their contemporary transformation offers the opportunity to teach Daoism in a way that is both academically sound and practically relevant to our students.
To sum up, the multiplicity of views and interpretations attached to both Laozi the book and Laozi the personage is a positive phenomenon that can greatly enrich the teaching experience of Daoism for both students and teacher. There is no single Daode jing; there is no single figure Laozi. Rather than looking for unity, we should realize that it is exactly this multifaceted richness of the text and the personage that attracts us to them and that makes them model cases for the study of Daoism and, by extension, of religion in general.