Early Daoist Scriptures (Daoist Classics , No 1): Volume 1 - Softcover

Bokenkamp, Stephen R. R.; Nickerson, Peter

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0520219317 ISBN 13: 9780520219311

Publisher: University of California Press, 1999

Synopsis

For centuries Daoism (Taoism) has played a central role in the development of Chinese thought and civilization, yet to this day only a few of its sacred texts have been translated into English. Now Stephen R. Bokenkamp introduces the reader to ancient scriptures never before published in the West, providing a systematic and easily accessible introduction to early Daoism (c. 2nd-6th C.E.). Representative works from each of the principal Daoist traditions comprise the basic structure of the book, with each chapter accompanied by an introduction that places the material within a historical and cultural context. Included are translations of the earliest Daoist commentary to Laozi's Daode jing (Tao Te Ching); historical documents relating the history of the early Daoist church; a petitioning ritual used to free believers from complaints brought against them by the dead; and two complete scriptures, one on individual meditation practice and another designed to rescue humanity from the terrors of hell through recitation of its powerful charms. In addition, Bokenkamp elucidates the connections Daoism holds with other schools of thought, particularly Confucianism and Buddhism.

This book provides a much-needed introduction to Daoism for students of religion and is a welcome addition for scholars wishing to explore Daoist sacred literature. It serves as an overview to every aspect of early Daoist tradition and all the seminal practices which have helped shape the religion as it exists today.

About this title

About the Author

Stephen R. Bokenkamp is Professor of East Asian Languages and Culture at Indiana University.

From the Back Cover

"A work of historic proportions. . . . A whole new world of ancient religious life is being opened to us here, and readers can trust Bokenkamp to guide them through that world."--Russell Kirkland, University of Georgia

"Bokenkamp, whose previous works on Daoism are already deservedly well known and appreciated, presents complete translations of six major Daoist texts. His introductions to each of them delineate and elucidate some points of both the history and fundamental notions of Daoism, which so far have remained unclear or subject to debate. This book will undoubtedly provide a better understanding of Daoism."--Isabelle Robinet, author of Taoist Meditation: The Mao-shan Tradition of Great Purity

"Early Daoist Scriptures combines the latest and best of world scholarship on the Daoist religion with fluent and accurate translations of essential primary sources. Professor Bokenkamp gives both the general public and specialist alike our first study of religious Daoism that tells the story of the development of its rich and complicated beliefs, practices, and institutions in historical and social context. Elegantly and cearly written, the book is a delight to read; it should also be the authoritative word on the subject for years to come." --Suzanne Cahill, University of California at San Diego

From the Inside Flap

"A work of historic proportions. . . . A whole new world of ancient religious life is being opened to us here, and readers can trust Bokenkamp to guide them through that world." Russell Kirkland, University of Georgia

"Bokenkamp, whose previous works on Daoism are already deservedly well known and appreciated, presents complete translations of six major Daoist texts. His introductions to each of them delineate and elucidate some points of both the history and fundamental notions of Daoism, which so far have remained unclear or subject to debate. This book will undoubtedly provide a better understanding of Daoism." Isabelle Robinet, author of Taoist Meditation: The Mao-shan Tradition of Great Purity

Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.

Early Daoist Scriptures

By Stephen R. Bokenkamp

University of California Press

Copyright © 1999 Stephen R. Bokenkamp
All right reserved.
ISBN: 9780520219311
General Introduction

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The texts chosen for translation here represent three major traditions in the early development of the Daoist religion: the Celestial Masters, the Shangqing (Upper Clarity), and the Lingbao (Numinous Gem).1 A brief account of these traditions, and of the texts chosen to represent them here, follows.

Celestial Masters

The Way of the Celestial Masters (also known as Zhengyi [Correct Unity] Daoism or, often pejoratively, as the Way of the Five Pecks of Rice) is the first Daoist organization for which we have substantial documentation. The official date for the founding of Celestial Master

Daoism is 142 C.E. , when Laozi, in his incarnation as a deity, appeared to the first Celestial Master, Zhang Daoling, on a mountaintop in what is now Sichuan province. By the end of the second century, Zhang's grandson, Zhang Lu, had succeeded to the title, and the community, due to the turmoil attending the fall of the Han, had taken sanctuary in the Hanzhong Valley, just north of the Sichuan Basin and over two hundred kilometers southwest of the Han capital of Chang'an. In 215 C.E. , Zhang Lu surrendered to Cao Cao, the Wei general whose son was to inaugurate the Wei dynasty of the Three Kingdoms period. As a result of this act of fealty, a large portion of the Celestial Master community, perhaps a quarter of the estimated four hundred thousand who occupied the valley, was moved from Hanzhong and scattered throughout the realm, while many of its leaders were enfeoffed or otherwise ennobled.2 Although followers from the early period doubtless remained in Sichuan, the spread of Daoism throughout China as a whole began with this diaspora of the original Celestial Master community.

The aspects of Celestial Master Daoism that most caught the attention of contemporary historians were its organization, its codes of benevolent morality, and its practice of confession and petitioning rituals the latter being means of invoking divine powers for curing disease. The Celestial Masters introduced converts to the faith through recitations of the Laozi , which was interpreted in startling new ways to support the main tenets of their faith. Through such practices, the group was said to have won the allegiance of both Chinese and "barbarians" (in this case, partially sinicized members of various ethnic groups resident in Sichuan).

There is still considerable controversy over which of the surviving Celestial Master scriptures can be dated to the early years of the sect. Of the four texts chosen for inclusion here, three can be firmly dated; the fourth represents an aspect of the religion we know to have been present from the beginning.

1. The Xiang'er commentary to the Laozi

Although the Laozi text (also known as the Daode jing ) was important to the Celestial Masters from the very beginning, this commentary most likely dates from the time when the Celestial Master

community occupied the Hanzhong Valley, roughly from 190 to 215 C.E. In early sources, authorship of the commentary is ascribed to Zhang Lu, the third Celestial Master and grandson of Zhang Daoling.

The commentary provides unique insights into the beliefs and practices of the early Celestial Masters. It also attests to the uses to which they put the Laozi text, which was reinterpreted in ways that would inform the subsequent development of the Daoist religion. Among the more significant of these reinterpretations is that the intended audience of the Laozi , originally the potential sage or sage-ruler, is widened to include all humanity. Moral codes, derided as humanly contrived and counterproductive in the Laozi , are reinstituted, and, in fact, warrant is found for them in the text. The common people are no longer to be kept in a state of natural ignorance. Instead they are urged, under the watchful eye of the spiritual bureaucracy emanating from the Dao, to enter the ranks of the blessed through moral action. In addition, as I try to show in the introduction to my translation, the commentary contains substantial clues concerning the physiological beliefs, meditation practices, and rituals of the early Celestial Masters.

2. Commands and Admonitions for the Families of the Great Dao

This treatise, found in a collection of early Celestial Master documents, was composed for promulgation to a scattered Celestial Master community after the dispersal of the Hanzhong community. Dated precisely to 1 February 255 C.E. , the text seems to be put into the mouth of Zhang Lu but is most likely the work of someone else (perhaps one of Zhang's sons), who received it as a spirit communication.

In this text, we get our first glimpse of the cosmology of Celestial Master religion and a specific account of how the Dao incarnated itself to aid suffering humanity throughout history. We are also introduced to the concept of "seed people," those fortunate mortals selected to survive the cataclysms brought on by the end of a world age and to populate the new era of Great Peace. Although the moral world is much the same as that revealed in the Xiang'er commentary,

there are further accommodations to Confucian morality, particularly the importance of hierarchies based on the family.

Written when the Wei kingdom was on the verge of collapse, the Admonitions testifies to the further disruptions this event caused the Celestial Master sect and to internal struggles among its leaders brought about by official recognition. Though it pretends to address the Celestial Master sect as a whole, we do not in fact know how large this "saving remnant" may have been. What is clear from this text is that the fragmentation of the sect, begun with the diaspora of the Hanzhong community, was exacerbated not only by the collapse of its Wei patrons, but also by internal dissension brought on by imperial patronage itself.

3. Scripture of the Inner Explanations of the Three Heavens

After the fall of the Wei kingdom in 266 C.E. , historical documentation on the Celestial Masters is sparse for a period of some 150 years. Then, with the rise to prominence of the general Liu Yu, the most successful of the southern generals who tried to retake northern China after its capture by the Huns in 317, and his dynastic line, we encounter several Daoist texts written to support the throne. These range from demonographies to more sober treatises urging a return to ideological unity as a prerequisite for reunifying China.3 The Inner Explanations , composed between 417, when Liu Yu distinguished himself by briefly recapturing Chang'an, the old capital, and the early 420s, after Liu had proclaimed himself emperor of the new Song dynasty, is of the latter type.

A Celestial Master treatise announcing that it should be treated as scripture, this text details the concern of the Dao for the Han ruling house, now thought to be renascent in its descendant, Liu Yu. Although the history of the Celestial Masters given in this text has been to some extent rewritten to demonstrate this thesis, the Inner Explanations still provides us with a unique account of the survival of Celestial Master beliefs and practices during a period for which we have little other documentation. As the title of the scripture proclaims, the text gives us full account of the "three heavens," formed of the three pneumas that separated from the Dao at creation. It thus

presents one of the fullest surviving accounts of Celestial Master cosmology, though one subtly altered in response to the claims of two influential scriptural traditions Shangqing and Lingbao that had recently emerged in southern China.

The Inner Explanations recounts again the transformations of Laozi in aid of suffering humanity and provides an informed account of the perceived differences between Daoism and Buddhism, arguing again that the latter is fit only for barbarians and not for Chinese belief. Relative importance is given to the old Celestial Master notion, already prominent in the Xiang'er commentary, that deviant texts and deviant practices should be abandoned, although the new Daoist unity now clearly involves a wider variety of Daoist texts and practices than it had before.

4. The Great Petition for Sepulchral Plaints

Whereas this petition, translated and discussed here by Peter Nicker-son, comes from a late Tang dynasty collection of documents used by priests, the text probably dates to no later than the sixth century. The general form it takes and the issues it addresses, moreover, are continuous with other surviving examples of Celestial Master petitioning ritual.

One of the primary functions of the Celestial Master priesthood, as attested in early historical accounts, was the submission of written documents to the celestial bureaucracy for the purpose of healing illness, which, as generally in the China of this period, was believed in many instances to be caused by demonic agencies. In the case of the Great Petition , the sources of illness among the living lie within the grave, its cause, specifically, the unhappy spirits of dead family members. Through the proper ritual submission of this petition, which was to be delivered by corporal spirits called forth from the priest's own body to the gods on high, full power of the Dao was brought to bear on a disorder emanating from one of its constituent parts, the underworld bureaucracy.

This petition thus attests to the bureaucratic prognoses and solutions that Daoism, following earlier practices that Nickerson discusses, applied as a structural framework to functions that it took over from the exorcists and shamans of earlier Chinese religion.

Beyond the exorcistic goal of ensuring that the pollution of death would not infect the living, however, Daoist interventions in such cases were directed to assuring the salvation of the troubled ancestral souls who had infected their living relations. Ancient exorcistic commands that the living and dead remain separate and not interfere in the other's affairs thus take on a new meaning in this petition.

Shangqing

During the years 364 to 370, a number of Daoist texts were transmitted by celestial beings to a medium named Yang Xi (330-386?). These texts, entitled the Shangqing (Upper Clarity) scriptures after the name of the heaven from which the beings came, were to profoundly alter not only the history of Daoism, but that of Chinese society and letters as a whole. Written in an exalted and poetic language, the Shangqing texts revised Celestial Master ritual and incorporated much else from the religious traditions of China, all with the aim of creating a Daoist practice suitable for Yang's elite patrons and members of the gentry class who were their intimates. The Shangqing scriptures thus mark a massive infusion into Daoist practice from the grand heritage of elite literary traditions, from new terminology and insights drawn from texts such as the Laozi , the Zhuangzi , and the Chuci to a variety of texts and practices that were the provenance of the mystics and technicians known as fangshi .

These elements of the elite tradition served convincingly as the literary precursors of the astral meditations, visualizations, and drugs for personal apotheosis that Yang Xi presented as more refined than the methods of the Celestial Masters. His writings far surpassed earlier technical manuals, however, in that Yang fashioned a fully realized cosmology and pantheon, as well as enticing accounts of those whether human or divine who had engaged in the practices he presented. The text chosen here to represent this extensive corpus of scriptures, and to show some of the ways in which they recast previous Daoist practice into new molds, is one of the earliest that Yang received during his midnight visions.

Among the fangshi practices that came to be included in the Shangqing texts was alchemy, the art that sought to create the medi-

cine of transcendence through the precisely phased baking of mineral and vegetable drugs in a closed crucible. Already attested in China in the second century B.C.E. , alchemy remained a secret art, passed from master to disciple according to strict rules of transmission. Then a southern literatus, Ge Hong (283-343), penned for unrestricted distribution a passionate defense of the possibility of transcending the human state, together with the titles of a number of alchemical texts and details on the concocting of elixirs. One of the texts Ge mentions had a demonstrable influence on the Shangqing text translated here.

The Upper Scripture of Purple Texts Inscribed by the Spirits

Like many Shangqing texts, the Purple Texts is a compilation of meditations leading to personal transcendence, practices that had already proved effective in the lives of the deities who made them known to Yang. This is made most clear in the third section of the text, the biography of an exalted Shangqing deity that outlines the practices by which he achieved his celestial status. Foremost among those meditations was a practice for creating the embryos of perfection within the body through the absorption of lunar and solar essences, a method meant to replace Celestial Master sexual rites, which in the Shangqing tradition were seen as vulgar.

We also find in the Purple Texts a fantastic account of an alchemical recipe based on an early text known to Ge Hong, the Yellow Thearch's Scripture of the Divine Elixirs of the Nine Tripods . As I try to show in the introduction to the Purple Texts , these alchemical arcana, including secret drug names, were meant primarily as metaphors for elements of the meditation practice described earlier rather than for actual production.

Finally, we are told how the deity whose biography is provided here, Li Hong, will appear at the imminent end of the world-age to rescue the seed people chosen mortals distinguished by certain practices, virtues, and physical signs. The eschatological vision of this text reminds us forcefully of the uncertainty of the times in which it was written, some fifty years after the occupation of northern China by the Huns and a period in which the Jin dynasty, having

failed to regain the northern homelands, was already showing signs of collapse.

Lingbao

In about 400 C.E. , some thirty years after Yang Xi's revelations and in the same county, just southwest of modern Nanjing, another scriptural corpus began to appear. These writings were known as the Lingbao (Numinous Gem or Spiritual Treasure) scriptures. Equally devoted to revising Celestial Master Daoism on the basis of more traditional religious practices, the Lingbao scriptures presented themselves as the antithesis of the Shangqing tradition in two major ways. First, they directly confronted Buddhism, adapting and modifying it freely on the basis of the claim that Buddhism was but a foreign version of Daoism, begun when Laozi went west to "convert the barbarians." Rather than conclude from this myth that Buddhism was meaningless for China, the author of the Lingbao texts seems to have taken the claim as license to borrow extensively from Buddhist scripture, refiguring these borrowed elements in the same way that he did the contents of other scriptures, including material from the Shangqing texts. Second, and related to this, the Lingbao scriptures concern themselves, with bodhisattva-like intensity, with the salvation of all beings. Rather than the private meditations of the Shangqing scriptures, we find in these texts communal rituals like those of the Celestial Masters. Unlike Celestial Master rites, however, the salvific efficacy of Lingbao rituals was to extend to all beings. Both of these features are much in evidence in the text chosen for translation here.

The Wondrous Scripture of the Upper Chapters on Limitless Salvation

The Scripture of Salvation , although meant for private recitation in the meditation chamber rather than communal practice, was held to work in the same way as other rituals in the Lingbao corpus. Through the agency of the text and the secret celestial language it contains, the practitioner expresses knowledge of the workings of the Dao and thus activates its perfect and primordial power on

behalf of souls suffering in the earth-prisons, the purgatories of Chinese belief. This feature marks the Scripture of Salvation as one of the "wisdom texts" of Daoism.

The constituents of this wisdom are a knowledge of the workings of the Dao from highest antiquity through a new pantheon of deities held to be more ancient and thus more exalted than those described in earlier scriptural traditions. We are given in this text an account of how the Lingbao scriptures arose from the primordial ethers and of the gods and demons, some directly inspired by Buddhism, that can be called upon to bring about salvation through recitation of the text. One of the most interesting features of the scripture is the way in which it tames the Buddhist notion of rebirth, an idea viewed as incompatible with filial piety and the ties of familial obligation that were prominent features of Chinese religion.

With their synthetic concerns, the Lingbao scriptures prefigure the unifying trend that was to characterize the Daoism of the following centuries. This trend was continued by Lu Xiujing (406-477), who was responsible for collecting the original Lingbao scriptures, separating out the many scriptures written in imitation, and creating new liturgies. In 471, Lu presented to the throne the first comprehensive list of Daoist scriptures, divided, as is the canon today, into three "caverns" (dong , or comprehensive collections) of texts. From this point on, the traditions we have been discussing were merged, at least conceptually, and we can begin speaking of a unified Daoist religion. Sectarian distinctions and disagreements are indeed to be found in Daoist history, and its organization was never more than a loose one, but the religion proved remarkably immune to the sorts of schisms that are commonplace in the history of religions.

This unification and the texts appropriate to its study fall beyond the scope of this book. Here we must content ourselves with an initial examination of but a handful of the most important texts of the early period of the religion. Nonetheless, it is worth noting that, with the exception of the Xiang'er commentary, all of the texts translated here, as well as the ideas and practices they contain, continued to play a role in the development of the religion and are to be found in the Ming-period Daoist canon, the last official collection of

Daoist texts. As Isabelle Robinet has aptly put it, the history of the Daoist religion "shows us how it has ceaselessly proceeded by 'recursive loops,' taking up its past like a bundle under its arm in order to travel farther along towards new horizons, and as it goes, gleaning all sorts of treasures along the way."4 The texts translated here, among the first stuffed into the bundle, will, once carefully unpacked, again fulfill their stated purpose, revealing traces of the Daoist Transcendent's journey across the terrain of early China.

The Worldview of the Daoist Religion: General Perspectives and Definitions

Daoism

The term "Daoism" is used in writings on China to cover a wide variety of phenomena, from a bibliographic classification of philosophical texts including the Zhuangzi , the Laozi , and other works to vaguely defined attitudes: the love of nature, the pursuit of personal freedom, and a concomitant antipathy toward the Confucian-inspired social order, an antipathy shared by a number of recluses and disillusioned former officials throughout the course of Chinese history. In this way, Daoism and Confucianism have come to be seen as the yin and yang poles of Chinese thought. Nearly every figure in the history of Chinese society who cannot be readily identified as Confucian is apt to be portrayed as a Daoist. Those so identified include a disparate collection of practitioners, mystics, and thinkers healers, shamans, alchemists, seekers of immortality, figures from popular religion who managed to find mention in the dynastic histories, and even a few Confucians who, toward the end of their lives, withdrew from society and found solace in one or another of the philosophical works bibliographically classed as Daoist, or even in the Daoist religion itself. In the English-speaking world in particular, the student in search of a clearer idea of just what Daoism might be has not been helped by the recent appearance of new "translations" of the Laozi accomplished by those whose preparation for the task has been the study of martial arts, by Western works of "oriental mysticism," or by the proliferation of self-

help manuals confidently proclaiming the Dao of corporate negotiation and the like.5

Confusing as all this is, we need to remember that it is precisely the situation Daoism faced throughout its formative years. The Daoist Lu Xiujing might have been reading in the "Eastern Religions" section of any modern bookstore when he wrote, of some "Daoist" texts of his day, that

it seemed as if they were written by madmen persons lacking the inner qualities to reach the mysterious and without any desire to seek out perfection who had written [these texts based on] what they were able to spy out [of the original scriptures], falsely taking on the name "Daoist" in their greedy search for income.6

And, even earlier, the Daoist author of the first text translated here confronted the same sort of debasement of what he considered the Dao when he wrote (in the indignant voice of a god): "Those mortals who commonly practice false arts proclaim them as the teachings of the Dao, but it is all fraud and may not be employed." Such plaints, in fact, appear with frequency in Daoist writings.

It is common for any religion to establish principles of orthodoxy so as to distinguish itself from rival faiths, and Daoism, as Rolf Stein has amply demonstrated, was at constant pains to distinguish itself from popular religion, but the frequency with which Daoist authors felt it necessary to write on this topic during the period under consideration here attests to a fairly high level of anxiety concerning questions of self-definition.7 The root causes of this anxiety tell us much about the nature of the religion. In establishing their religion, Daoists borrowed extensively from the revered texts and practices of their day and thus were at constant pains to distinguish themselves from the schools of thought and the religions surrounding them an attempt that we might regard, again thinking of our modern bookstores, as having been less than successful.

Nonetheless, we can, from the texts translated here, derive a fairly clear idea of how Daoism sought to define itself.8 Again and again, the authors of these texts, in the face of various challenges, real and perceived, return to the assertion that what they write is authentic because it was imparted to them by the Dao itself, usually through

the agency of one or more deities held to emanate directly from the Dao. How each of them sought to demonstrate this claim is of little consequence here. What does matter is that, to combat the "deviations" of Confucianism, of popular religion, or of Buddhism, or merely to correct the utterances of other Daoists, this claim is ultimately invoked. For the authors of these texts, Daoism constitutes those teachings imparted by the Dao in human time. Simply stated, then, Daoism is by its own account the higher religion of China, characterized by the doctrine that the primordial and eternal Dao acts in human history both directly, through the agency of its hypostases, particularly Laozi, and indirectly, through a pantheon of deities that include those resident in the human body.

The defining concept of the Daoist religion is thus, quite naturally, the Dao itself, but understood in a revolutionary way. The term dao , originally denoting a "way" or "path," came to be used in pre-Han philosophical discourse, and particularly Confucian writings, to refer to the proper course of human conduct and, by extension, to the teachings of any philosophical school, especially as those were based on the venerated ways of the sages of antiquity.9 In the Laozi and the Zhuangzi , the foundation texts of what came to be called "philosophical Daoism," the Dao came to be seen not as human order, but as the basis of natural order itself, the way the world operates when humans leave it alone.10 Like the dao of correct human conduct, the metaphysical Dao in its purest form was to be discerned not in the chaotic present, but in the distant past. Since it was precisely the paragons of Confucian order who had disturbed the workings of the Dao, this past was distant indeed, even preceding the genesis of the cosmos, when the Dao was yet undifferentiated and had not yet split into the myriad things of the sensible world. At the same time, the Dao, though inchoate, was held to be eternally present and could still be grasped in its primal fullness by those specially endowed with correct insight into the flux of existence.11

This dao of the philosophers informs religious Daoist texts as well, but in the religion based on these ideas we find an added dimension of great significance.12 Although the philosophers allowed that the Dao was immanent, so that one with special mystical insight might comprehend the Dao in its wholeness, Daoists (a term I will hereafter reserve for adherents of the Daoist religion) held that the

Dao underwent further self-transformations, analogous to those at the creation, to incarnate itself in human history. The Dao itself was seen as partially anthropomorphic, possessed, if at first not of an image, then of likes and dislikes, desires, sentiments, and motivations the full range of human emotions. At the same time, it might act in history through specially appointed avatars, such as Laozi, who were fully human in appearance. Finally, a whole panoply of transcendent deities, including those resident in the human body, were regarded as divine hypostases of the Dao.

There is no doubt that there were throughout history some Daoists, usually members of the literati, who held that this deification of the Dao was no more than a metaphor serving to instruct the ignorant. For the period under consideration here, though, it was the deified Dao that distinguished Daoism from other schools of thought. It is one of the features, from our perspective, that qualifies Daoism as a religion rather than a philosophy.13

It is important to remember that there is no single avatar of the Dao. Laozi, who from his transcendent residence on Mount Kunlun appeared to Zhang Daoling in 142 C.E. to formally inaugurate the Celestial Master religion, was not the first or only hypostasis of the Dao. As Anna Seidel, in her extensive work on the deification of Laozi during the Han dynasty, concludes, the prestigious position accorded Laozi was most likely due to the fact that he was associated with a book, the Daode jing , an obscure text that might be interpreted in any number of ways and that enjoyed high regard in the intellectual life of ancient China.14 The Laozi text was always revered within the religion, though interpreted in new and often startling ways.15 In a similar fashion, the figure of the deified Laozi was subjected to interpretation and elaboration. The Shangqing school held that one of their higher deities, the Great Lord of the Dao of Jade Dawn, was the "teacher of Laozi," whereas the Lingbao scriptures describe this same deity as a disciple of their own higher god, the Celestial Worthy.16 As early as the fourth century, even Celestial Master scriptures present deities who existed prior in time and were thus more exalted than the deified Laozi.17 Such developments were not intended to supplant Laozi, but to position the revelations in which these new figures appeared earlier in time and thus closer to the primal Dao than those of the Celestial Masters. Many

of the new cosmic deities thus borrow attributes from the deified Laozi and can, like the Sage Lord Li Hong of the Purple Texts , translated here, be understood as having been developed from the figure of Lord Lao.

This leads us to a final aspect of our definition. Michel Strickmann, in his impressive but ultimately futile attempt to limit the term "Daoism" to the Daoist religion, defines as Daoist those who (1) "recognize the historical position of Zhang Daoling"; (2) "worship the pure emanations of the Dao rather than the vulgar gods of the people at large"; and (3) "safeguard and perpetuate their own lore and practices through esoteric rites of transmission."18 Although almost no one has stopped speaking of pre-Han "Daoism" in connection with the Laozi and the Zhuangzi , the first part of Strickmann's definition has also been questioned. Isabelle Robinet has rightly pointed out that Zhang Daoling is not accorded reverence at all in the Shangqing scriptures, and Anna Seidel has discovered one Daoist group that worshiped Lord Lao as the embodiment of the Dao before the appearance of the Celestial Masters, as well as evidence of other, similar sects.19 Thus, although our definition owes much to Strickmann's insights, we can no longer confidently state that all Daoists recognized Zhang Daoling as founder of their religion, nor can we hold that the Daoist religion has a precise beginning in 142. In fact, we cannot, with the texts that have come down to us, put a definite beginning to religious Daoism, though it now seems clear that by the Latter Han it was beginning to take shape.

Nonetheless, the Celestial Master movement marked a radical break with earlier Daoist traditions. This break came about with the recognition that, as the Dao worked everywhere in the human world through the spirits that emanated directly from it, so too should the religion reach all classes of society, including the marginally sinicized and the illiterate. A second idea, related to the first, was that the celestial bureaucracy should be replicated on earth by a hierarchy of priests who were responsible not just to one or two initiates, but to a larger body of the faithful and, through them, to the society as a whole. Earlier sects may have entertained these ideas, but the Celestial Masters were able to make them an enduring feature of the reli-

gion.20 The social mission of Daoism, in short, begins with the Celestial Masters.

The precise mechanisms that the Celestial Masters set up to accomplish these ends the system of twenty-four parishes with their Libationers did not survive intact, but the social and unifying impulses of the sect did. Even the Shangqing scriptures of Yang Xi, which in many ways model themselves on the older master-disciple lineages of Han Daoism, portray salvation (albeit in lower heavens or subterrestrial study centers) as available to all Daoists while simultaneously reworking communal Celestial Master rites for individual practice. Further, through its classification of doctrines, the Shangqing movement was responsible for bringing into what was envisioned as a single Daoist system a diverse set of practices deriving from the Han period, including alchemy and certain visionary meditation techniques. The result was the creation, during the fifth century, of a tripartite categorization of Daoist scripture and practice in a single Daoist canon.21 The Celestial Master scriptures were not one of the three, having been fully replaced in the milieu that produced this system by later revelations, but the impulse to unify diverse doctrines, classify scriptures, and grade the levels of priesthood clearly has its roots in the original vision of Celestial Master Daoism.

Furthermore, Daoist traditions of the period under consideration here without exception found it necessary to position themselves either in continuation of or in reaction to the Celestial Masters. In either case, the social history of Daoism was seen as having involved Zhang Daoling. Although we thus cannot see the Celestial Masters as the originators of religious Daoism, it is appropriate to begin with them, as they represent the telling moment when the Dao broke forth into human history.

Pneuma (qi)

The concept of qi as the underlying stuff of existence is common to all schools of thought in China. The notion of qi seems to have developed together with and to have particular relevance for concepts of the Dao. In its primordial form, before division, the Dao is

described as "nothingness," void and null. The first sign that it was about to divide, a process that would eventuate in the creation of the sensible world, was the appearance within this nothingness of qi , a term that originally seems to have meant "breath" or "steam." All physical objects in the universe are thus composed of relatively stable qi , whereas rarefied qi is responsible for motion and energy and is the vital substance of life. In many respects the concept of qi is comparable to the atomism of early Greek philosophy.22 The Chinese, though, sought not for the smallest stable particle but for the lineaments of the system as a whole, a system they recognized immediately as being characterized first and foremost by change, which they imagined to be regular and cyclical. As a result, they came to represent transformations of qi in terms of recurring cycles, marked off in terms of yin, yang, the five phases, or the eight trigrams. (For the eight trigrams, see figure 1; for some of the more common associations of the eight trigrams and the five phases, see tables 1 and 2.) In such systems, qi was the intervening matrix by which things sharing the same point in the cycle might resonate and influence one another.

Daoism, building both on such cosmological speculation and on various practices for extending life that featured the induction into the body of pure, cosmic qi , regarded qi as the primary medium by which one might apprehend and eventually join with the Dao. Most meditation practices, in one way or another, involve swallowing qi and circulating it within the body, the primary difference between Daoist meditations and similar hygiene practices being that Daoists visualized the substance either in deified form or as the astral sustenance for qi -formed deities resident in the body. In fact, all of the higher gods of Daoism were held to be concretions of qi from the earliest moments of the Dao's division. Qi thus bridged the gulf between the sensible and the transcendent worlds.

The term qi has been translated in a number of ways "breath," "vapor," "energy," "pneuma." "Atom," to my knowledge, has never been forwarded as a possible translation. It would be ideal, had it not been co-opted by modern science. "Breath," although getting at the original meaning of the word, has too narrow a range of connotations in English for it to function as a translation of qi . The term "energy" might be accurate had early Chinese thinkers foreseen

Image not available.

Fig. 1.
The Eight Trigrams of the Yijing. For common associations of the
eight trigrams, see table 1.

TABLE 1. COMMON ASSOCIATIONS OF THE EIGHT TRIGRAMS OF THE YIJING (IN THE "LATTER HEAVENS" ARRANGEMENT)
	Natural Phenomena	Direction	Number	Altar Position	Family	Body	Animal
qian	heaven	northwest	6	celestial gate	father	head	dragon
kun	earth	southwest	2	moon gate	mother	belly	ox
zhen	thunder	east	3	text tablea	elder son	foot	horse
sun	wind	southeast	7	earth door	elder daughter	thighs	hen
kan	water	north	1	text tablea	middle son	ears	pig
li	fire	south	9	text tablea	middle daughter	eyes	pheasant
gen	mountains	northeast	8	sun gate	youngest son	hands	dog
dui	marshes	west	4	text tablea	youngest daughter	mouth	sheep
Note : For a representation of the "Prior Heavens" and "Latter Heavens" arrangements of the eight trigrams, see figure 1.
a. According to this altar arrangement from the Lingbao scriptures, the Five-Part Script would be placed on short text tables on the four sides (north, south, east, and west) and in the center of the altar.

TABLE 2. COMMON ASSOCIATIONS OF THE FIVE PHASES IN DAOIST TEXTS
Phase	Direction	Celestial Beast	Planet	Pneuma	Season	Number	Color'	Body Part	Organ	Holy Mountain
Wood	east	Green Dragon	Jupiter	Lesser Yang	spring	9	green	eyes	liver	Tai Shan
Fire	south	Vermilion Sparrow	Mars	Greater Yang	summer	3	red	mouth	heart	Huo Shan
Earth	center	Ascending Snake	Saturn	Centrally Harmonious	Controller	12 or 1	yellow	stomach	spleen	Sung Shan
Metal	west	White Tiger	Venus	Lesser Yin	autumn	7	white	ears	lungs	Hua Shan
Water	north	Murky Warrior	Mercury	Greater Yin	winter	5	black	navel	kidneys	Heng Shan

subatomic physics, but there is no evidence that they saw matter as composed of moving particles . Rather, qi was an indivisible substance that flowed or stagnated and might, like water, be found in nature in solid, liquid, or gaseous forms. Concretions of qi were sometimes called jing (essence). "Vapor," with its connotations of evanescence, leads to confusions of a different sort, suggesting as it does that Daoists, like Buddhists, saw the world as insubstantial illusion.23 Pneuma , from Greek pnein (to breathe) and originally meaning "spirit," is of course not quite right either, since not all forms of qi were regarded as spiritual. But the fact that, now that the age of pneumatic drills and pneumatic tubes is all but past, the word has few connotations for the English reader makes it, I think, preferable as a translation of qi .24

Scripture

The word translated as "scripture" is jing , the same word used by Confucians to designate the classics of their tradition, the master texts containing the ancient teachings on a particular subject in their fullness. The word denotes primarily the warp threads on the weaver's loom and, applied to texts, seems meant to call forth connotations of stability, thoroughness, and of providing shape to the "fabric" of society. On each of these primary texts there might be any number of commentaries or "traditions" of interpretation (zhuan ), but the jing were the font of the tradition. The same word was adopted by translators to render the Sanskrit sutra*

, the scriptures containing transcriptions of the "words of the Buddha."

Daoist conceptions of scripture are markedly different from those of Confucianism or Buddhism. The Daoist view is based on the nature of written Chinese and on the idea that the cosmic ordering of the Dao, though perverted in the present world, is still recoverable in the patterns it has laid down. Scripture is made up of wen , a word that means "patterns" or "markings" and, by extension, "Chinese characters," "writing," "text," and even "cultured," "civilized," or "ordered." Each Daoist text (wen ) defines itself as a historical concretization of the eternal, divine patterns (wen ) of the Dao inhering in the cosmos. The individual scripture is therefore regarded as part of a whole, finally unobtainable, truth a representation of the time-

less frozen in time and congealed in debased human writing (wen ) that can, by its very nature, only point to what lies beyond. Because of this, there is the possibility of countless scriptures expressing the truths of the Dao. This is in fact the attitude we encounter in Dao-ism, with new scriptural tradition placing itself with respect to the others but generally regarding these earlier accounts when there are contradictions with civilized condescension as later or less accurate translations.

At the most rarefied level, we have actual examples of "celestial script," graphs that resemble Chinese characters but are in fact the language of heaven and require more mundane exegesis in order to be accessible to humans. Talismans charms that could be carried or swallowed to command or empower deities or to drive off demons also were considered to derive their efficacy from the fact that they mimicked celestial patterns (wen ). Even those scriptures composed wholly in standard Chinese were regarded as translations into profane language of more potent divine texts. Such scriptures thus depend for their interpretation on a vast specialized vocabulary including such things as the names of deities, celestial place names, secret names for techniques and for the spirits controlling parts of the human body all seldom encountered in other types of literature.

This conception of scripture finds full expression in the Shangqing and Lingbao revelations, with their need to position their scriptures earlier in time, and as more closely emanating from the Dao, than those of the Celestial Masters.25 Nonetheless, the Xiang'er commentary presents the first scripture of Daoism, the Daode jing , as a direct transcript of the words of the Dao and of various transcendent beings who have already merged with the Dao. Further, the Daode jing requires the exegesis of the Celestial Master, for its words are apt to be misunderstood, as the commentary stridently makes clear. There is thus ample reason to believe that this Daoist conception of scripture goes back to the beginnings of the religion.

Transcendent Beings

It is common in works on China to describe Daoism as the "religion of immortality." This commonplace is not quite accurate, at least not as we in the West tend to understand immortality. The Dao itself

is immortal, and the goal of Daoists was to merge with the Dao. As we have seen, however, one of the primary characteristics of the Dao is change. Specifically, the Dao moves in cycles, first dividing to form the universe in its ever-increasing complexity and then imploding back in on itself to begin all over again from its state of primal unity. This cosmic rhythm, sometimes seen as occurring in cycles of impossible magnitude one Han source calculates the length of one cycle as 23,639,040 years led to the concept of world-ages. Sometimes the larger world-age was said to be divided into five minor ones, each associated with one of the five phases.26 Whatever the case, when the Dao returned to its primal unity, nothing outside of it remained and nothing continued in the state it had existed in to that point. This was as true for scriptures, deities, and powers as it was for humans who had joined with the Dao. Immortality of shape and substance was thus impossible. The best one could hope for was to "cross over" with the Dao to be formed anew in the next world-age. Many of the highest gods of Daoism were considered such precisely because they had undergone this transfiguration from the "prior heavens" to reappear in the "latter heavens."27 That is why the texts translated here, and all others of which I am aware, tend to speak in terms of "longevity," "long life," and, more poetically, "an existence equal with that of the sun and moon" rather than of immortality.28 As change and transformation are so central to Dao-ism, the details of this doctrine, though it perhaps differs only subtly from what we recognize as "immortality" in other religions, should be respected.

Beyond this distinction, about which the texts translated here tend to be quite careful, there is the additional fact that the term often translated as "immortal" (xian ) denotes a variety of different beings, from the "earth-bound xian " existing on the terrestrial plane or under it in the cavern-heavens to celestial beings proper. One quality these beings share is that they have been "transferred," in the etymological gloss of the Lingbao scriptures, from the common human state to a more subtilized form of existence, closer to the nature of the Dao. There is thus not a single chasm between mortals and immortals, but a chain of being, extending from nonsentient forms of life that also experience growth and decay to the highest reaches of the empyrean.29 The term designating those who have

ascended to rungs of the ladder higher than those occupied by humans, the xian , will accordingly be translated as "transcendent."

In the Shangqing and Lingbao scriptures we encounter yet another type of being, the Perfected.30 These beings, even more exalted than the transcendents, are described as having left behind all vestiges of earthly corruptibility to achieve bodies formed of stellar substance. They move effortlessly through the highest heavens and tend to be described with metaphors conveying gemlike brilliance and durability. More will be said about these beings in the introduction to the Purple Texts .

Continues...

Excerpted from Early Daoist Scripturesby Stephen R. Bokenkamp Copyright © 1999 by Stephen R. Bokenkamp. Excerpted by permission.
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Edition details

• Publisher: University of California Press
• Publication date: 1999
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0520219317
• ISBN 13: 9780520219311
• Binding: Paperback
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 520