![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
camwynYep! I finally got off my butt and did another entry! Huzzah!
This is not gonna be a lesson that makes me happy. See, this is a site devoted to Chinese history. That implies a certain degree of verifiable data. I mean, in Western terms Herodotus did a lovely job with his book, but from what I understand it would be better termed a collection of traveler's tales with some partly fact-based legends, some outright myths, and a bit of history stirred in. I'm not saying it wasn't based on actual historical fact, I'm just saying that the facts were in short supply and got kinda twisted on their way to Halicarnassus. Wasn't his fault. He did what he could with what he had. In this particular case, the situation is worse. Herodotus was just writing a book of what he honestly thought was history. The subject of today's lecture lies at the center of a major philosophical system, and is crucial to more than a few world religions. That means that it is completely and utterly impossible to get a simple, unvarnished account of his life from anywhere. . . which isn't to say I'm not gonna try.
You probably know today's subject as Lao-tzu, if your early exposure to Chinese names was rendered in Wade-Giles romanization, like mine was. (See my lesson on romanization for an explanation of what the heck I just said.) You might also know him as Laozi. There's a good chance that if you've read anything detailed about him, you know him as Li Er, or Li Dan - but if you know anything detailed about him, then you'll most likely want to go on to the next entry, because there probably won't be anything here you don't already know. He's considered the father of Daoism, and the author of the Daodejing (Taoism and Tao-te Ching, respectively, but I'm going to stick with Pinyin for the rest of this lecture).
Our best source for information on Laozi's life is the monumental historical work of Sima Qian - remember him? I mentioned him in the entry on eunuchs. A lot of the best information we have on early Chinese history comes from him. Anyway, according to the Grand Historian, Laozi was court archivist in the state of Chu in southern China during the Zhou Dynasty. He's said to have been consulted by Confucius on ancient rituals, and he's praised as a man of virtue, modesty, and no desire for fame. Supposedly he did his job very well and served his masters as best he could, but the court, like pretty much every other bunch of rulers ever, eventually went into decline. (Big surprise. If he was in a court position at the time that Confucius was looking for information on How To Do Things Right, it would have been around 500 BCE or so. The Zhou kings were well into In Name Only territory by then, which means that the underkings and lesser rulers would've been feeling their oats.) The general state of court and the people he was supposed to be serving got to him, and he lit out for the equivalent of Huck Finn's 'Injun territory', the barbarian lands beyond the northwestern border. The Shi ji says he got there and was recognized by Yin Xi, the official in charge of the border pass, who asked him to please write down what he knew before he rode off into the sunset. Given that he wanted to get out of the country with as little fuss as possible, our subject got out his brush and his inkstick and inkstone, called for paper, and wrote out a book of five thousand characters. Once this was done, he headed through the pass and nobody ever saw him again.
At least, that's what Sima Qian says. Trouble is, almost immediately afterwards the Grand Historian starts trying to pin down exactly who Laozi was, whether he was actually some specific known historical individual, etc. This is NOT how you go about inspiring confidence in your reader! In all fairness to Sima Qian he probably couldn't help it. He was working with a number of different traditional accounts several hundred years after the fact, across more than a few civil wars and book burnings, trying to come up with something coherent and official. It's a wonder he managed to get as much as he did, considering that:
'Laozi' was taken by most people to be a title meaning 'Old Master' - but
the man in question is referred to as 'Lao Dan' in accounts from other early Daoist philosophers;
he's also called Li Er in certain accounts;
there was a philosopher named Li Er who lived sometime during the Warring States period (more on that in another lesson, but it was between 480 and 221 BCE), recognized as a brilliant man in his own right;
Confucius specifically cites this man four times as a good example and source in his Record of Rites, but neglects to specify exactly WHEN he met with him;
Laozi's work was categorized along with other philosophers, thinkers, and teachers as part of one school of thought, all focused on Dao (the Way) - but not until the Han Dynasty, which began in 206 BCE and which Sima Qian served; and
Laozi wound up being deified and plopped at the very head of the table as a supreme deity.
Did I mention the part where at least one legend claims he was known as the Old Master because he was born with a long white beard? Or because his mother was supposedly pregnant with him for decades on end? You begin to see poor Sima's problem. . .
I'm not going to argue in favour of one claim or another, because that would require background information that I simply don't have. The archaeologists and the scholars have been working on this for longer than the modern nations of Europe have existed, and they still don't have a definitive answer that satisfies all the scholars. All I'm going to say is that the oldest version of the manuscript known dates to 300 BCE. Since this ancient version was written on slips of bamboo and arranged in an order not found in later manuscripts, there are scholars who feel that this indicates it was a sort of teaching text, with the parts found on the bamboo being those favored for teaching. (The tomb this was found in was on the small side, but indications are that it belonged to a tutor of one of the crown princes of Chu.) If the text was being used as a teaching document, then it must've been in circulation for quite some time, which indicates that it was old even when it was placed into the tomb - and that indicates the possibility of authorship falling within the time frame given by Sima Qian. Of course, the out-of-order and partial nature of the text could indicate other things, like the possibility that the 'canonical' version of the text hadn't been decided on yet, but I'll leave that argument to those whose life's work it is.
And what a life's work it would be, too! For a book that's traditionally known as the Classic of Five Thousand Characters, there's been a hellacious amount of fuss and argument over its subject matter, its intention, even the meaning of specific words. In the first version I ever read, the translator noted that Sinologists considered attempting a translation of this book to be a culmination-of-your-career kind of thing. Given the fact that Laozi's little book became the first-ever foundation text of an entire religion that comes with its own built-in disclaimer, I can believe it. . .
No, seriously, the Daodejing has a disclaimer on the first page of the first chapter. At least, in the versions most commonly known in the West it does. (The version I read first was translated from a manuscript discovered at an archaeological site named Mawangdui, where the 'later' chapters were found on top and therefore assumed to be first.) Here, the first four lines, courtesy of an awfully nice fellow's online translation:
"Even the finest teaching is not the Tao itself.
Even the finest name is insufficient to define it.
Without words, the Tao can be experienced,
and without a name, it can be known."
Or, as it has been translated in more than a few other places, 'the Way that can be taught is not the eternal Way; the name that can be named is not the eternal Name'. Which boils down to, essentially, "I can tell you everything I know and you still aren't guaranteed to get it, because words and names are too confining to adequately convey the fundamental essentials of something infinite." Not all that different a sentiment from the Jewish scholars of the Middle Ages and the Renaissance who said that God could only be described negatively - in terms of what God was not - because human language was by its nature limiting and God was infinitely awesome, in the fundamental sense of the word.
But we're not dealing with medieval Judaism, we're dealing with the basics of Daoism. If Laozi couldn't adequately explain it to you, I'm sure as hell not gonna be able - the best I can do is point you in the right direction and say 'go on, have a look'. (Specifically, have a look at
this page. It's a reference page that points to several different online translations of the Daodejing. Way cheaper than a paper copy but you don't get to scribble argumentative comments in the margins.) And the right direction is probably fundamental to the whole concept, because Dao means 'the way'. That's all. Not a god, not a force, not a specific thing - just the way. Sometimes this refers to the way a human being is supposed to live his or her life. Sometimes it refers to the way things interact with each other. Sometimes it refers to the way the immutable laws of Heaven work, or the way knowledge and wisdom may be used or abused. Ultimately, it refers to every single one of them. Daoism makes no fundamental distinctions between one and the next, because according to Laozi, distinctions are misleading, confusing, and ultimately unnecessary. The ideal, in his way of thinking, is a simple and serene state - wuwei, or 'actionless action'. By not spending energy, time and thought on frantically chasing after this or that - by not doing - it becomes possible to do absolutely anything at all. By allowing oneself to understand that one really knows nothing, it becomes possible to understand everything. By the interaction of opposites, new things are generated.
Tough to grasp? Try it like this. Go to the beach. Pick up a handful of sand. That sand does nothing, it simply is - and yet in its own way, it's immensely valuable and vital to millions of people. Sand, by itself, is apparently nothing at all. Under the right conditions, it becomes glass. You can drink out of it, look through it, send messages through it (if it's fiber-optic cable), protect things with it, or set things on fire with it. Under other conditions, it becomes an industrial abrasive. The roughness produces smoothness. Opposites interact and produce something more, all because the sand simply is - that's its nature, its place in the Way. If the sand were dancing around furiously in a windstorm, it wouldn't accomplish anything, except annoying or harming people. That would be counter to its nature. It's sand. Laozi used the example of an uncarved block, a piece of wood or stone which had never been worked and was therefore true to its own nature; the word for uncarved block is often rendered into the Roman alphabet as 'p'u'. If you really and truly want a better understanding of the concepts, pop on over to your library or bookstore and get a copy of
The Tao of Pooh, by Benjamin Hoff. (I wouldn't recommend The Te of Piglet; I tried reading it once and wasn't all that happy with it.)
Still having trouble with the whole emptiness and not acting thing? Okay, that's fine. . . try this instead. Take that sand and fill your favorite coffee mug with it. All the way up to the brim. Pack that sand in good. Now, get a cup of coffee. Can you do it? If you can, you either have truly amazing spatial warping capabilities and should contact James Randi, or you like your coffee with sand in it and have more problems than I can solve, or you got another cup, which is probably what Laozi would've done. The cup is only useful as long as it's empty. You can't fill a full cup, it's already full of something else. Empty the cup and it's useful again.
Other parts of the book talk about the importance of morality, but emphasize that grasping onto specific concepts and virtues (particularly Confucian ones like 'humaneness' and 'righteousness') can cause problems just as much as not having inner virtue at all. There's also more than a few parts where the author talks at some length about politics and warfare, about how the best warriors are the ones who accomplish their goals with a minimum of anger and killing and how the best government is a government that rules through virtue and letting the people live the Way themselves, with as little interference as possible. Laissez-faire government thousands of years before the French language even existed, folks. . . check it out. Of course, like all other political ideas it requires that a significant portion of the population behave the same way. Nobody's perfect.
If I try to explain any further this will turn into a purely philosophical lecture rather than a historical one. It's important to know the basics, because they heavily influenced rulers of China from the Han dynasty on, and because the ideas of Taoism integrated themselves into virtually every philosophical and social movement to move through the Middle Kingdom. Chinese alchemy is predicated on fundamentally Taoist concepts of opposites and interaction. (Crack open a copy of Bridge of Birds and check out the chapter about Dr. Death and his alchemical quest to restore his beloved wife to life.) The martial arts that deal with internal energy and chi are drawing like crazy on Taoist theory and belief. In the end it all comes back to one man, who might have been one man or might have been several men or might not have existed at all, and a book he might have written by himself, or might have had nothing to do with beyond inspiring those who listened to him to write down the ideas, or might not have even touched because the book came after him. It could be any of them, and you'll find people who'll argue in favour of each and every possibility. The only thing I can really say in my own defense has already been said by someone else, but he got it right, so I'm going to paraphrase it here:
"[History] is the search for FACTS, not truth. If it's truth you're looking for, Prof. Tyree's Philosophy course is right down the hall."
Thank you, Indiana Jones.
Next lesson will be on the Warring States period in Chinese history. Since it's when both Confucius and Laozi lived, it's as logical a point as any to resume. There are other philosophers stemming from this period, of course, but until I actually get to sit down and read Mozi and Han Feizi's books through, I can't really say how they influenced Chinese historical action and thought. We'll see what happens. . . in the meantime I have to go research the Warring States. See you then.
(Want more Taoist stuff? Try these:
http://www.lucidcafe.com/library/96jun/laotzu.html
http://www.hku.hk/philodep/ch/laoency.htm
http://www.thetemple.com/TheShrineOfWisdom/TheSimpleWay.html
Enjoy.)
(Memo to self: no matter HOW easy it is, don't EVER use MS Word to write one of these entries again, then paste it into DW, then try to transfer it to an LJ entry. yeesh.)
This is not gonna be a lesson that makes me happy. See, this is a site devoted to Chinese history. That implies a certain degree of verifiable data. I mean, in Western terms Herodotus did a lovely job with his book, but from what I understand it would be better termed a collection of traveler's tales with some partly fact-based legends, some outright myths, and a bit of history stirred in. I'm not saying it wasn't based on actual historical fact, I'm just saying that the facts were in short supply and got kinda twisted on their way to Halicarnassus. Wasn't his fault. He did what he could with what he had. In this particular case, the situation is worse. Herodotus was just writing a book of what he honestly thought was history. The subject of today's lecture lies at the center of a major philosophical system, and is crucial to more than a few world religions. That means that it is completely and utterly impossible to get a simple, unvarnished account of his life from anywhere. . . which isn't to say I'm not gonna try.
You probably know today's subject as Lao-tzu, if your early exposure to Chinese names was rendered in Wade-Giles romanization, like mine was. (See my lesson on romanization for an explanation of what the heck I just said.) You might also know him as Laozi. There's a good chance that if you've read anything detailed about him, you know him as Li Er, or Li Dan - but if you know anything detailed about him, then you'll most likely want to go on to the next entry, because there probably won't be anything here you don't already know. He's considered the father of Daoism, and the author of the Daodejing (Taoism and Tao-te Ching, respectively, but I'm going to stick with Pinyin for the rest of this lecture).
Our best source for information on Laozi's life is the monumental historical work of Sima Qian - remember him? I mentioned him in the entry on eunuchs. A lot of the best information we have on early Chinese history comes from him. Anyway, according to the Grand Historian, Laozi was court archivist in the state of Chu in southern China during the Zhou Dynasty. He's said to have been consulted by Confucius on ancient rituals, and he's praised as a man of virtue, modesty, and no desire for fame. Supposedly he did his job very well and served his masters as best he could, but the court, like pretty much every other bunch of rulers ever, eventually went into decline. (Big surprise. If he was in a court position at the time that Confucius was looking for information on How To Do Things Right, it would have been around 500 BCE or so. The Zhou kings were well into In Name Only territory by then, which means that the underkings and lesser rulers would've been feeling their oats.) The general state of court and the people he was supposed to be serving got to him, and he lit out for the equivalent of Huck Finn's 'Injun territory', the barbarian lands beyond the northwestern border. The Shi ji says he got there and was recognized by Yin Xi, the official in charge of the border pass, who asked him to please write down what he knew before he rode off into the sunset. Given that he wanted to get out of the country with as little fuss as possible, our subject got out his brush and his inkstick and inkstone, called for paper, and wrote out a book of five thousand characters. Once this was done, he headed through the pass and nobody ever saw him again.
At least, that's what Sima Qian says. Trouble is, almost immediately afterwards the Grand Historian starts trying to pin down exactly who Laozi was, whether he was actually some specific known historical individual, etc. This is NOT how you go about inspiring confidence in your reader! In all fairness to Sima Qian he probably couldn't help it. He was working with a number of different traditional accounts several hundred years after the fact, across more than a few civil wars and book burnings, trying to come up with something coherent and official. It's a wonder he managed to get as much as he did, considering that:
'Laozi' was taken by most people to be a title meaning 'Old Master' - but
the man in question is referred to as 'Lao Dan' in accounts from other early Daoist philosophers;
he's also called Li Er in certain accounts;
there was a philosopher named Li Er who lived sometime during the Warring States period (more on that in another lesson, but it was between 480 and 221 BCE), recognized as a brilliant man in his own right;
Confucius specifically cites this man four times as a good example and source in his Record of Rites, but neglects to specify exactly WHEN he met with him;
Laozi's work was categorized along with other philosophers, thinkers, and teachers as part of one school of thought, all focused on Dao (the Way) - but not until the Han Dynasty, which began in 206 BCE and which Sima Qian served; and
Laozi wound up being deified and plopped at the very head of the table as a supreme deity.
Did I mention the part where at least one legend claims he was known as the Old Master because he was born with a long white beard? Or because his mother was supposedly pregnant with him for decades on end? You begin to see poor Sima's problem. . .
I'm not going to argue in favour of one claim or another, because that would require background information that I simply don't have. The archaeologists and the scholars have been working on this for longer than the modern nations of Europe have existed, and they still don't have a definitive answer that satisfies all the scholars. All I'm going to say is that the oldest version of the manuscript known dates to 300 BCE. Since this ancient version was written on slips of bamboo and arranged in an order not found in later manuscripts, there are scholars who feel that this indicates it was a sort of teaching text, with the parts found on the bamboo being those favored for teaching. (The tomb this was found in was on the small side, but indications are that it belonged to a tutor of one of the crown princes of Chu.) If the text was being used as a teaching document, then it must've been in circulation for quite some time, which indicates that it was old even when it was placed into the tomb - and that indicates the possibility of authorship falling within the time frame given by Sima Qian. Of course, the out-of-order and partial nature of the text could indicate other things, like the possibility that the 'canonical' version of the text hadn't been decided on yet, but I'll leave that argument to those whose life's work it is.
And what a life's work it would be, too! For a book that's traditionally known as the Classic of Five Thousand Characters, there's been a hellacious amount of fuss and argument over its subject matter, its intention, even the meaning of specific words. In the first version I ever read, the translator noted that Sinologists considered attempting a translation of this book to be a culmination-of-your-career kind of thing. Given the fact that Laozi's little book became the first-ever foundation text of an entire religion that comes with its own built-in disclaimer, I can believe it. . .
No, seriously, the Daodejing has a disclaimer on the first page of the first chapter. At least, in the versions most commonly known in the West it does. (The version I read first was translated from a manuscript discovered at an archaeological site named Mawangdui, where the 'later' chapters were found on top and therefore assumed to be first.) Here, the first four lines, courtesy of an awfully nice fellow's online translation:
"Even the finest teaching is not the Tao itself.
Even the finest name is insufficient to define it.
Without words, the Tao can be experienced,
and without a name, it can be known."
Or, as it has been translated in more than a few other places, 'the Way that can be taught is not the eternal Way; the name that can be named is not the eternal Name'. Which boils down to, essentially, "I can tell you everything I know and you still aren't guaranteed to get it, because words and names are too confining to adequately convey the fundamental essentials of something infinite." Not all that different a sentiment from the Jewish scholars of the Middle Ages and the Renaissance who said that God could only be described negatively - in terms of what God was not - because human language was by its nature limiting and God was infinitely awesome, in the fundamental sense of the word.
But we're not dealing with medieval Judaism, we're dealing with the basics of Daoism. If Laozi couldn't adequately explain it to you, I'm sure as hell not gonna be able - the best I can do is point you in the right direction and say 'go on, have a look'. (Specifically, have a look at
this page. It's a reference page that points to several different online translations of the Daodejing. Way cheaper than a paper copy but you don't get to scribble argumentative comments in the margins.) And the right direction is probably fundamental to the whole concept, because Dao means 'the way'. That's all. Not a god, not a force, not a specific thing - just the way. Sometimes this refers to the way a human being is supposed to live his or her life. Sometimes it refers to the way things interact with each other. Sometimes it refers to the way the immutable laws of Heaven work, or the way knowledge and wisdom may be used or abused. Ultimately, it refers to every single one of them. Daoism makes no fundamental distinctions between one and the next, because according to Laozi, distinctions are misleading, confusing, and ultimately unnecessary. The ideal, in his way of thinking, is a simple and serene state - wuwei, or 'actionless action'. By not spending energy, time and thought on frantically chasing after this or that - by not doing - it becomes possible to do absolutely anything at all. By allowing oneself to understand that one really knows nothing, it becomes possible to understand everything. By the interaction of opposites, new things are generated.
Tough to grasp? Try it like this. Go to the beach. Pick up a handful of sand. That sand does nothing, it simply is - and yet in its own way, it's immensely valuable and vital to millions of people. Sand, by itself, is apparently nothing at all. Under the right conditions, it becomes glass. You can drink out of it, look through it, send messages through it (if it's fiber-optic cable), protect things with it, or set things on fire with it. Under other conditions, it becomes an industrial abrasive. The roughness produces smoothness. Opposites interact and produce something more, all because the sand simply is - that's its nature, its place in the Way. If the sand were dancing around furiously in a windstorm, it wouldn't accomplish anything, except annoying or harming people. That would be counter to its nature. It's sand. Laozi used the example of an uncarved block, a piece of wood or stone which had never been worked and was therefore true to its own nature; the word for uncarved block is often rendered into the Roman alphabet as 'p'u'. If you really and truly want a better understanding of the concepts, pop on over to your library or bookstore and get a copy of
The Tao of Pooh, by Benjamin Hoff. (I wouldn't recommend The Te of Piglet; I tried reading it once and wasn't all that happy with it.)
Still having trouble with the whole emptiness and not acting thing? Okay, that's fine. . . try this instead. Take that sand and fill your favorite coffee mug with it. All the way up to the brim. Pack that sand in good. Now, get a cup of coffee. Can you do it? If you can, you either have truly amazing spatial warping capabilities and should contact James Randi, or you like your coffee with sand in it and have more problems than I can solve, or you got another cup, which is probably what Laozi would've done. The cup is only useful as long as it's empty. You can't fill a full cup, it's already full of something else. Empty the cup and it's useful again.
Other parts of the book talk about the importance of morality, but emphasize that grasping onto specific concepts and virtues (particularly Confucian ones like 'humaneness' and 'righteousness') can cause problems just as much as not having inner virtue at all. There's also more than a few parts where the author talks at some length about politics and warfare, about how the best warriors are the ones who accomplish their goals with a minimum of anger and killing and how the best government is a government that rules through virtue and letting the people live the Way themselves, with as little interference as possible. Laissez-faire government thousands of years before the French language even existed, folks. . . check it out. Of course, like all other political ideas it requires that a significant portion of the population behave the same way. Nobody's perfect.
If I try to explain any further this will turn into a purely philosophical lecture rather than a historical one. It's important to know the basics, because they heavily influenced rulers of China from the Han dynasty on, and because the ideas of Taoism integrated themselves into virtually every philosophical and social movement to move through the Middle Kingdom. Chinese alchemy is predicated on fundamentally Taoist concepts of opposites and interaction. (Crack open a copy of Bridge of Birds and check out the chapter about Dr. Death and his alchemical quest to restore his beloved wife to life.) The martial arts that deal with internal energy and chi are drawing like crazy on Taoist theory and belief. In the end it all comes back to one man, who might have been one man or might have been several men or might not have existed at all, and a book he might have written by himself, or might have had nothing to do with beyond inspiring those who listened to him to write down the ideas, or might not have even touched because the book came after him. It could be any of them, and you'll find people who'll argue in favour of each and every possibility. The only thing I can really say in my own defense has already been said by someone else, but he got it right, so I'm going to paraphrase it here:
"[History] is the search for FACTS, not truth. If it's truth you're looking for, Prof. Tyree's Philosophy course is right down the hall."
Thank you, Indiana Jones.
Next lesson will be on the Warring States period in Chinese history. Since it's when both Confucius and Laozi lived, it's as logical a point as any to resume. There are other philosophers stemming from this period, of course, but until I actually get to sit down and read Mozi and Han Feizi's books through, I can't really say how they influenced Chinese historical action and thought. We'll see what happens. . . in the meantime I have to go research the Warring States. See you then.
(Want more Taoist stuff? Try these:
http://www.lucidcafe.com/library/96jun/laotzu.html
http://www.hku.hk/philodep/ch/laoency.htm
http://www.thetemple.com/TheShrineOfWisdom/TheSimpleWay.html
Enjoy.)
(Memo to self: no matter HOW easy it is, don't EVER use MS Word to write one of these entries again, then paste it into DW, then try to transfer it to an LJ entry. yeesh.)
