In the Shadows of the Dao

Thomas Michael

Description

Thomas Michael's study of the early history of the Daodejing reveals that the work is grounded in a unique tradition of early Daoism, one unrelated to other early Chinese schools of thought and practice. The text is associated with a tradition of hermits committed to yangsheng, a particular practice of physical cultivation involving techniques of breath circulation in combination with specific bodily movements leading to a physical union with the Dao. Michael explores the ways in which the text systematically anchored these techniques to a Dao-centered worldview. Including a new translation of the Daodejing, In the Shadows of the Dao opens new approaches to understanding the early history of one of the world's great religious texts and great religious traditions.
Acknowledgments
Preface

1. Reading the Daodejing Synthetically

Orientations
Conventions
Shadows
On the Early Daoism Label

2. Modern Scholarship on the Daodejing

Religious and Philosophical Approaches to the Daodejing
Modern Western Approaches to the Daodejing
Modern Chinese Approaches to the Daodejing

3. Traditions of Reading the Daodejing

Daojia, Daojiao, and Early Daoism
The Role of Commentary in the Daodejing
The Heshang Gong Commentary
The Xiang’er Commentary
The Wang Bi Commentary
Three Commentaries in Comparison

4. The Daos of Laozi and Confucius

Records of the Interview
Glimpses into the Dao of Antiquity
The Fault Line
Two Disciplines of the Body
Laozi and Confucius Revisited

5. Early Daoism, Yangsheng, and the Daodejing

The Hiddenness of Early Daoism
A Separate History
Orality and the Daodejing
Early Daoism and Yangsheng
Two Master Traditions and a Third
Yangsheng and the Daodejing

6. The Sage and the World

Early Chinese Archetypes: the Sage, the King, and the General
The Benefits of the Sage
Qi: The Stuff of Life
De: Circulation Is Not Always Virtuous
De in Action

7. The Sage and the Project

The Death-World
Projects
The Great Project of the World
Salvation

8. The Sage and Bad Knowledge

A Confucian Study Break
Knowledge and Yangsheng Sequences
Brightness and Yangsheng Sequences
Knowledge Is a Sickness
The Question of Early Daoism Revisited

9. The Sage and Good Knowledge

The Second-Order Harmony
Yangsheng and the Knowledge of the Sage

Appendix: The Daodejing
Notes
Bibliography
Index

Sujets

• East Asian religions
• Taoism

Informations

• Publié par: State University of New York Press
• Date de parution: 25 septembre 2015
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9781438458991
• Langue: English
• Poids de l'ouvrage: 11 Mo

Extrait

In the Shadows of the Dao
SUNY SERIES IN C HINESE P HILOSOPHY AND C ULTURE
Roger T. Ames, editor
In the Shadows of the Dao

L AOZI , THE S AGE , AND THE Daodejing
THOMAS MICHAEL
Published by
STATE UNIVERSITY OF NEW YORK PRESS
Albany
© 2015 State University of New York
All rights reserved
Printed in the United States of America
No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission. No part of this book may be stored in a retrieval system or transmitted in any form or by any means including electronic, electrostatic, magnetic tape, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise without the prior permission in writing of the publisher.
For information, contact
State University of New York Press
www.sunypress.edu
Production, Laurie D. Searl
Marketing, Anne M. Valentine
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Michael, Thomas, [date]
In the shadows of the Dao : Laozi, the sage, and the Daodejing / Thomas Michael.
pages cm. — (SUNY series in Chinese philosophy and culture)
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 978-1-4384-5897-7 (hardcover : alk. paper)
ISBN 978-1-4384-5899-1 (e-book)
1. Laozi. Dao de jing. 2. Confucius. Lun Yu. I. Title. BL1900.L35M53 2015 299.5'1482—dc23 2015001388
10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
for my teachers, Anthony Yu and Wendy Doniger
And so for all of the many hermits who honor the techniques of Laozi: externally they disdain glory and splendor and internally they nourish life and longevity, yet they experience no hardships in this dangerous world. The moisture of Laozi’s vast spring that has long flowed forth is abundant, abundant, like this. How could he not have been established by Heaven and Earth as the teacher for ten thousand generations?
及諸隱士其遵老子之術者皆外損榮華內養生壽無有顛沛於險世 其洪源長流所潤洋洋如此豈非乾坤所定萬世之師表哉
—Ge Hong, Shenxian Zhuan 1:7a.
Contents
Acknowledgments
Preface
1. Reading the Daodejing Synthetically
Orientations
Conventions
Shadows
On the Early Daoism Label
2. Modern Scholarship on the Daodejing
Religious and Philosophical Approaches to the Daodejing
Modern Western Approaches to the Daodejing
Modern Chinese Approaches to the Daodejing
3. Traditions of Reading the Daodejing
Daojia , Daojiao , and Early Daoism
The Role of Commentary in the Daodejing
The Heshang Gong Commentary
The Xiang’er Commentary
The Wang Bi Commentary
Three Commentaries in Comparison
4. The Daos of Laozi and Confucius
Records of the Interview
Glimpses into the Dao of Antiquity
The Fault Line
Two Disciplines of the Body
Laozi and Confucius Revisited
5. Early Daoism, Yangsheng , and the Daodejing
The Hiddenness of Early Daoism
A Separate History
Orality and the Daodejing
Early Daoism and Yangsheng
Two Master Traditions and a Third
Yangsheng and the Daodejing
6. The Sage and the World
Early Chinese Archetypes: the Sage, the King, and the General
The Benefits of the Sage
Qi : The Stuff of Life
De : Circulation Is Not Always Virtuous
De in Action
7. The Sage and the Project
The Death-World
Projects
The Great Project of the World
Salvation
8. The Sage and Bad Knowledge
A Confucian Study Break
Knowledge and Yangsheng Sequences
Brightness and Yangsheng Sequences
Knowledge Is a Sickness
The Question of Early Daoism Revisited
9. The Sage and Good Knowledge
The Second-Order Harmony
Yangsheng and the Knowledge of the Sage
Appendix: The Daodejing
Notes
Bibliography
Index
Acknowledgments
My first acknowledgement goes to the very long line of Daodejing readers and practitioners who get important insights from this short work into what is wrong in the world and who are committed to its fullest philosophy of life contained in the simple word “nurturance” 養 ( yang ). These readers and practitioners whom I acknowledge here also see in it the wonderful possibilities of life transformed by nurturance, and I have depended on the momentum from such readers and practitioners long dead and others who shall live long to carry the present work to completion.
I have struggled for many years to bring this work to completion. The process of engaging the Daodejing so intimately for so long has provided me with joys and satisfactions that I will forever cherish, and this process has opened many doors to me. It has pushed me to experience countless Daoist urban temples and mountain monasteries throughout many parts of China, and I have made solid friendships with some of the best scholars of Daoism in the contemporary world, Chinese, European, and American. On this note, I want to particularly acknowledge Livia Kohn’s magnificently successful efforts in bringing together the best modern scholars and practitioners of Daoism from both the East and the West by way of the International Conferences of Daoist Studies, to which she has devoted herself for many years; I have had the satisfaction of participating in almost all of them. Further, I also thank her for allowing me to work very closely with her in organizing the 9th Conference in the series that was held at Boston University in 2014.
Finally having the opportunity to cap In the Shadows of the Dao gives me the opportunity to acknowledge Lin Qiaowei, my very dear friend and fellow scholar of Daoism, for escorting me through many bookstores in China where I was able to amass a solid library of scholarly works on which I continue to depend for all of my research in early Daoism. Qiaowei also spearheaded and organized my lecture series at Sichuan University some years ago, where I had the unforgettable experience of meeting and spending an entire afternoon and evening with modern China’s foremost scholar of Daoism, Qing Xitai. His recognition and appreciation of my researches into Daoism provided me with the courage and confidence to continue to pursue them. His generosity in giving me his support as well as his ideas became a major source of strength as I pushed the present book to the end.
Since the publication of my first book on early Daoism ( The Pristine Dao: Metaphysics in Early Daoist Discourse ) some ten years ago, In the Shadows of the Dao has been gestated, formed and reformed, and brought finally into the light of day from within the academic environment that I have inhabited for most of my adult life. Those readers who come to this book from their own positions in the academic environment of Daoist Studies (or Early Chinese Studies, or Chinese Philosophy, or Chinese Religion) will know the controversy that infuses most discussions of the Daodejing in such circles. The publication of In the Shadows of the Dao will likely add a few more degrees of intensity to these discussions, as several readers of the manuscript before publication have remarked. So my next acknowledgment goes to those people already familiar with it and who have encouraged me to persevere and bring this project to conclusion. Of particular note in this regard are two of my closest friends and colleagues, Chris Ellson and Georges Favraud, but also my friends Cassandra, Sarah, Andrew, Colin, and Tara.
I situate this work as one further addition to the field of Daoist Studies. This field is notorious for the intense debates between two (or three, as I argue later) radically divergent perspectives centered on a single and highly contentious methodological conflict. This conflict stems from the fact that a minority of modern Western scholars insists that Daoism started centuries later than what has traditionally been taken as established historical fact, and it is precisely this traditional understanding for which I argue in all of my scholarship on early Daoism. I am not alone in this, and there are many modern Western scholars who agree with me on just this point, namely that the appearance of the Daodejing was a foundational event from its earliest circulations beginning around the end of the Spring and Autumn period of early China, roughly the fifth century BC. To find even a single ordained Daoist over the last two thousand years who would refute this is to engage in a losing battle.
While it is tempting to reduce this methodological conflict to a debate between “Philosophy” and “History” or “Religion” in their most general senses, the primary issue at stake concerns how exactly we are to approach the Daodejing . This is a contentious debate in which the various participants have clearly staked out positions intellectually, historically, and professionally. On the one side are historians of early Chinese religions. At the head of this camp stand the French-language scholars Henri Maspero, who wrote in the earlier twentieth century, and, a few decades later, Kristofer Schipper, who himself was an ordained Daoist; both firmly held that Daoism existed centuries before the turn of the Common Era. Their influence has been mostly felt in French-language scholarship on Daoism, but the three most important English-language scholars who embrace their positions are Roger Ames, Harold Roth, and Livia Kohn. I heartily ackno