M09.3 Daoist writs

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Religious Transformation in Early China: the Period of Division

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The Chinese University of Hong Kong

Religious Transformation in Early China: the Period of Division

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This sequence of four courses will propose a multi-disciplinary approach to the study of Chinese cultural history conceived of as a succession of modes of rationality (philosophical, bureaucratic, and economic). The focus will be on the moments of paradigm shift from one mode of rationality to another. For each of these moments, cultural facts and artifacts—thought, literature, ritual—will be examined in relationship to changing social, political, and economic systems. The first two courses will cover the periods of the Warring States (481-256 BCE) and the Period of Division (220-589 CE), with a brief excursion into the Han (206 BCE-220 CE). The Warring States laid the social and cultural foundations for the emergence of the imperial mode of rationality; the Period of Division saw the Buddhist “conquest” of China and the emergence of a rationality defined by the opposition of the Three Teachings to shamanism, that is, of a clear contrast between elite and popular culture. The third and fourth courses will focus on the emergence of modern China in the Song-Yuan (960-1368) and of today’s China 1850 to the present. We will see how the modern attack on religion, redefined as "superstition", led not only to religious reform movements but also to a society in which science and the nation became the primary value systems promoted by the state. The courses are listed below: A Critical Cultural History of China - Early China I: Intellectual Change in the Warring States and Han (481 BCE-220 CE) A Critical Cultural History of China - Early China II: Religious Transformation in the Period of Division (220-589 CE) A Critical Cultural History of China - Modern China I: Religion and Thought in the Song, Jin, and Yuan (960-1368) (To be launched in late 2018) A Critical Cultural History of China - Modern China II: Structuring Values (1850-2015) (To be launched in late 2018)

À partir de la leçon

MODULE 09 Scriptures

This module explores how Buddhist and Daoist scriptures confirm the oral/aural bias of Buddhism, the written/visual bias of Daoism. We are going to learn the centrality of logic in Buddhism, of cosmology in Daoism.

M09.3 Daoist writs19:53

Rencontrer les enseignants

Prof. John Lagerwey
Research Professor
Centre for China Studies

So as we move on to look at Daoist scriptures by comparison with the Buddhist scriptures,

we stay still within the parameters of this second set

<i>Part II</i> of <i>Early Chinese Religion: the Period of Division</i>.

And the text that we will be following here is written by Wang Chengwen,

who is a professor at Sun Yat-sen University in Guangzhou,

and the title of his text, which has been translated from the Chinese,

is "The Revelation and Classification of Daoist scriptures." I underline the word "revelation,"

because revelation is an absolutely key part of the idea of the emergence of Daoist scriptures.

Buddhist scriptures we saw were seen as spoken, uttered by the historical figure, the Buddha.

These are considered to be revelations ultimately of the Dao, no matter whom they transit by.

So we said that the Buddhism had the three "baskets"; the three "caverns," or <i>sandong</i>,

of the Daoist are composed, simply, of three groups of southern Daoist writings,

all of which emerged in pretty much the same time. But first of all at the beginning,

the first grotto or cavern is the Shangqing scriptures which emerged around 364 to 370 AD,

and then the second portion—the second cavern

—is the Lingbao scriptures, which emerged around 400 AD.

So these are all revelations which occurred in fact in one very very small area near modern Nanjing in southern China.

The third canon [cavern]—at the very beginning of classification of Daoist texts—

was the so-called the Sanhuang texts, that is to say the texts of the Three Sovereigns,

which go back to these earlier <i>fangshi</i> masters of recipe traditions of southern Chinese Daoism.

Now first of all these are all southern texts and it's clearly a very partisan selection.

In fact it was so utterly inadequate as a Daoist response to the Buddhist canon

that it took nearly two centuries to come up with a canon that included such key texts as the <i>Laozi</i> itself,

and then of foundational texts from the Han dynasty that we've already referred to

namely the <i>Taiping jing</i> 太平經, <i>the Scripture of Great Peace</i>,

and above all texts from the Heavenly Master tradition.

But we're going to focus—among all these various scriptures—we're going to focus on the group of texts

which was most heavily influenced by Mahayana Buddhism in China, by Chinese Buddhism. Okay?

It's been so influenced that we often as specialists refer to it as "Mahayana Daoism,"

meaning that it's Great Vehicle Daoism that seeks like Buddhism to <i>pudu zhongsheng</i>

—save all creatures.

So what's going to be very interesting to see here is how it remains so thoroughly rooted in the Chinese tradition,

with its veneration of writing and the written text as opposed to oral origins,

and at the same time how it is transformed under the impact of Buddhism into a popular religion with its own oral dimensions.

Okay? But we're going to start with that indigenous factor.

All scriptures in the Lingbao canon are seen as derived from "true writs" <i>zhenwen</i>, which are also referred to as

"spontaneously generated celestial writs," <i>ziran tianshu</i> 自然天書.

There's going to be a whole series of terms that revolve around the idea of <i>wen</i>.

Okay? And we're going to just put them out there and gradually try to unpack them

so that we get a sense of the mystic character,

the relationship of these "true writs" to authenticity, toward creativity, towards origins.

Okay? So "spontaneously generated" means precisely that:

they're not born, they're not initiated, they're not originated by someone or something.

They're absolutely natural and they're celestial.

"Their earliest form was a coagulation of the pneumas," so the Qi.

"A coagulation of the pneumas of the 'three primordials' and 'five virtues'

that constituted the 'graphs of the eight nodes'." You say, oh forget it! Don't even try to explain,

but you can see immediately you have: 3+5=8. Okay? We can start with that. Let's start with the eight.

Eight is the division of time—the cycle of time, the cycle of the calendar

—into the four beginnings of the four seasons, so we speak in Chinese of <i>lichun lixia</i> 立春立夏

—that's a specific day which is observed as one of the <i>bajie</i> 八節 or "eight nodes"—eight articulations—

of the year and then of course the two equinoxes and the two solstices. Okay?

So that's what they represent

—they represent the coagulation of the pneumas of the eight nodes,

but these "eight nodes" are themselves the combination of the "three primordials" and the "five virtues."

Without going into a great amount of detail, three—why is three so important?

We've talked about it before: 1+2=3. Heaven+earth=man.

Heaven, earth, the waters under the earth.

So that the whole world is composed of three and so the <i>Laozi</i> Chapter 42 says:

"The Dao gives birth to the one, the one to the two, the two to three,

and then the three gives birth to the ten thousand things."

Okay? So that concept of three, "three primordials"—the three primordial energies,

which in fact later on will give the so-called Sanqing or Three Pure Ones of the Daoist canon

—the Daoist pantheon, rather.

The "five virtues," well, these are the five powers of the <i>wuxing</i>,

of the five agents or the five directions that we've also already talked about.

So you can see here that Daoist writing—these "true writs" which are spontaneously generated

—are considered as a summary of what makes the Chinese cosmos: heaven, earth, man; heaven, earth, waters;

Chinese time—the seasons of the five directions,

which is spatial and of the "eight nodes," which is temporal. Okay?

"Their origin"—the origin of these true writs—"is the Dao and pneuma"—Qi—"that is, the source of the cosmos."

In the Lingbao canon these Qi-characters are also called "celestial writs of Lingbao," <i>lingbao tianwen</i> 靈寶天文.

There's a wonderful article by one of my teachers, Max Kaltenmark,

about the concept of Lingbao and he shows that <i>ling</i> is associated with heaven

and <i>bao</i> is associated with earth. <i> Ling</i> is that which makes something numinous

—magically creative and powerful

—and <i>bao</i> is the treasure that that <i>ling</i> when it comes down to earth,

can be kept as a treasure.

So Lingbao incorporates in its very title that concept of heaven and earth meeting.

Okay? But <i>tianwen</i> is very simply the standard Chinese term for the constellations in the sky,

the heavenly patterns in the sky.

So these Qi-characters, I repeat, are called "celestial writs of Lingbao,"

but they are also called "celestial documents of Lingbao," <i>tianshu</i> 天書,"original writs" 本文,

"cloud-seal script" 雲篆. Why "cloud-seal script?

"Because clouds are like the Qi that is seen emanating from the mountains,

from caves, that rises up and then brings rain,

and so Chinese characters have a very specific form

that they can be written in which is called "cloud-seal script."

But in Daoism, this is thought in a very metaphysical way

in terms of Qi and clouds as an expression of Qi, that is to say vital energy.

And final term that is used in the Lingbao canon for these Qi-characters,

the "graphs of the three primordials and eight nodes."

We've already talked about them, so we don't have to come back.

But here we can see that the way they are thinking about these texts or these writs,

because they're not really texts yet, they're specific characters which embody the Qi

—the power—the creative and salvational power of that writing.

So Wang Chengwen goes on to describe what he calls the

"the theology of the celestial writs of Lingbao."

"Theology": personally I would prefer the term "cosmology,"

because in China, especially in Daoism, we're not really talking so much about gods in the way

we tend to think of them and in fact the way the Chinese people think of them,

that is sort of somehow anthropomorphic, somehow like human beings.

But as we've just seen it's very cosmological in character, so we can say the theology or the cosmology

of these "celestial writs" of Lingbao.

And what he points out is that they are derived from the Han period so-called "weft texts."

We had the <i>jing</i>, the weft—warp rather

—of the loom of writing and then the <i>wei</i>—that is to say the weft texts,

sometimes referred to as apocryphal texts,

but what they are is basically mystical explorations of the power of <i>jing</i>

—of the power of classics—and of the concepts that lie behind them.

So it's in these texts from the Han dynasty that these concepts of

"original writs," "perfect writs," "red writs," "celestial writs" all emerged.

Let's just take them one at a [time].

Original writs, well, of course that means that the origin—we'll come back to that.

They're "perfect writs," they're "red writs." Why are they "red writs"?

Well, there's a term in the <i>Laozi</i> which refers to the "red son."

What's the red son? Red son is a son who just got born,

he just came out of the womb, so he's pure potential, pure dynamic potential, pure life.

Okay? So in the same way these "red writs" represent pure <i>yang</i> energy.

Pure <i>yang</i> energy. And then "celestial writs" which we've already seen refers in fact to the heavenly patterns in the sky.

In all of these terms, the word translated "writ" <i>wen</i> 文 may in fact also be translated "pattern,"

referring to the pattern—that can be observed in nature, in the sky, on earth

—referring to the patterns that can in turn be converted into ordinary "readable" characters.

These characters are not readable, they're not even pronounceable, these <i>zhenwen</i>, these true characters.

They're all squiggly and they, some of them look like they've been infused

with an electric shock and the whole character has exploded. We'll give you some examples of these later on.

So these squiggly characters, these energetic characters, these configurations of energy I like to call them,

they can then be translated into ordinary "readable" characters,

because they're the patterns that produce a full narrative or a full discourse.

This role of <i>wen</i>, pattern,

in the process of analysis and understanding is clearly stated in an explanation of <i>benwen</i> 本文

"original writs," that is given in a late sixth century Daoist text called <i>Xuanmen dayi</i> 玄門大義.

And I quote from it: "Original"<i>ben</i> 本, "is the beginning <i>shi</i> 始, the root."

The root: key idea, because <i>ben</i> which is here first translated "original"

always goes together in Chinese with <i>mo</i> 末,

that is to say the root of the tree and the tips of its branches.

So it's the roots. "It is the beginning of scripture, the root of writing.

It is also the source of all patterns and the root of the myriad methods."

So all of these <i>fa</i>, all of these methods that are part of the Daoist religion,

they all have their roots in the patterns that are embedded, embodied in these strange writings.

And it goes on: "Writ," <i>wen</i>, "means division." Maybe recall that we compared music with ritual.

Ritual was about division, that is to say about analysis, about hierarchy, that is to say,

about a coherent discourse about something or other.

Whereas music put everything back together in one humpty-dumpty whole

in which there is pure potential which has not yet been activated and turned into specific things or persons.

So "writ" is division, pattern.

Here the term pattern is the term <i>li</i> 理 that will become so important in Neo-Confucianism in the Song dynasty,

so important that we can compare it with the Western word Logos, that is to say logic.

Okay? So the deep structure of things, that is what is embedded in these characters,

the way they are being thought in these Han dynasty weft texts and here in a Six Dynasty Daoist text.

"It is"—writ—"is the ability to divide and distinguish the two principles,"

that is to say the <i>yin</i> and the <i>yang</i>, the male and the female, heaven and earth.

The first and most basic distinction once we've gone out of the One, out of the Dao.

"It is also the ability to divide and discriminate among the many methods and to explain and elaborate the absolute pattern,"

that is to say the pattern which transcends all these particularities of the ten thousand things.

The core model for the Lingbao celestial writs

"are the increasingly elaborate descriptions in the [<i>wei] the apocrypha of the <i>Book of Changes</i>,"

the <i>Yijing</i> 易經, called the <i>Yiwei</i> 易緯

—listen carefully

"that traced the process by which Fuxi's eight trigrams were developed into mundane script."

So these Han dynasty texts of metaphysical reflection on the nature of writing and the nature of authority and legitimacy and so on,

they talk about Fuxi 伏羲 as the origin of the eight trigrams. Okay? Who's Fuxi? Well,

Fuxi and Nüwa 女媧 are sort of like Adam and Eve, way way back in the beginning —the source of humanity.

Okay, so he's the male of the Fuxi-Nüwa couple.

So it's tracing it back to the legendary mythical origins of humanity.

Fuxi is described in a number of myths as being the source of the eight trigrams

and in fact to have revealed them to the Great Yu

who then used them to draw off the floodwaters from the northwest down to the southeast

that we've already talked about.

But these eight trigrams of course correspond to that cycle of time that we just referred to as the eight <i>hui</i>,

or assemblies or nodes, of the Chinese year.

Okay? So the eight trigrams are also deployed to fit the four orients and the four corners.

Okay? So it also represents a pattern which describes space and time at the same time.

Okay, so these apocryphal texts describe

"the process by which Fuxi's eight trigrams were [gradually] developed into mundane script"

—that is to say into a coherent logical discourse that any human being can understand.

That these ideas had become current in the Eastern Han may be seen from the writings of such scholars as Xu Shen 許慎,

the first great producer of a dictionary in China, the <i>Shuowen jiezi</i> 說文解字,

and the great commentator of the Latter Han on the Five Classics, the <i>wujing</i> 五經,

Zheng Xuan 鄭玄, who lived from 127 to 200 AD.

So if we look at their texts we can see to what degree these ideas were widely shared among the intellectual elite in the Latter Han dynasty.

Directly derived from this "ancient mythology of writing"—we're coming back now to the Lingbao canon

—there is a section of texts that keeps reappearing in many of the Lingbao scriptures called the

"five chapters in red script 赤書五篇."

You already know why it's called "red script," pure <i>yang</i>, pure vitality, pure life.

You also already know why it's called "five chapters"—one for each direction.

So these five texts which in the Lingbao texts are all squiggly figures

—not normal characters

—that have to be translated into normal characters for them to be understood,

so due to, through chains of secret transmission.

So the "five chapters in red script" at the basis of the entire Lingbao canon

were formed by the Celestial Worthy of Primordial Commencement, <i>yuanshi tianzun</i> 元始天尊.

We'll just read the rest of this and then come back:

"At the same moment of 'great change' <i>taiyi</i> 太易 which the ancient sage king Fuxi observed in order to compose the eight trigrams."

Okay, let's unpack that! We already talked about Fu Xi composing the eight trigrams.

Here we see that he's observed nature and time and space in order to summarize them with the eight trigrams.

Okay? So that is called "the moment of great change" in these apocryphal texts,

these metaphysical meditations (because that's what they are)—the year of great change,

[what] the first man Fuxi [observes and then] produces a text which is the product of his reflection

on the observations of the patterns of nature and what he produces is the eight trigrams.

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