The Archaeology of Passage: Reading Invisibility in Chinese Tombs

The eleventh section of Daode jing (Tao Te Ching), the foundational text of Taoism, reads: . . . Thirty spokes share a hub; Because [the wheel] is empty, it can be used in a cart. Knead clay to make a vessel. Because it is empty, it can function as a vessel. Carve out doors and windows to make a room. Because they are empty, they make a room usable. Thus we possess things and benefit from them, But it is their emptiness that makes them useful. . . This section has always been appreciated as a supreme piece of rhetoric on the powers of nothingness, a philosophical concept fiercely articulated in the Daode jing. Whereas that may indeed be the author’s intention, the empirical evidence evoked to demonstrate this concept reveals an alternative way of seeing manufactured objects by focusing on their immaterial aspects. This way of looking at things has important implications for archaeological and art historical scholarship on ancient artifacts and architecture precisely because these two disciplines identify themselves with the study of physical remains of the past so firmly that tangibility has become an undisputed condition of academic research in these fields. Archaeologists routinely classify objects from an excavation into categories based on material and then inventory their sizes, shapes, and decoration. Art historians typically start their interpretation of images, objects, and monuments by identifying their formal attributes. Whereas such trained attention to material and formal evidence will surely persist for good reasons, the Daode jing section cautions us of the danger of ignoring the immaterial aspects of man-made forms, which, though eluding conventional typological classification and visual analysis, are nevertheless indispensible to their existence as objects and buildings. The current chapter incorporates this approach into a study of ancient Chinese art and visual culture by arguing that constructed empty spaces on artifacts and structures—holes, vacuums, doors, and windows—possess vital significance to understanding the minds and hands that created them and thus deserve a serious look into their meaning.

Birds and Beasts in the Zhuangzi, Fables Interpreted by Guo Xiang and Cheng Xuanying

Birds and beasts often appear in the Zhuangzi, in fables and parables meant to be read analogically as instructions for human thought and behavior. Whereas the analogical significance of some fables is obvious, in others it is obscure and in need of explication, and even the readily accessible can be made to yield more clarity thanks to commentaries. This paper explores contributions made by the commentaries of Guo Xiang (252–312) and Cheng Xuanying (ca. 620–670) to the understanding of such fables. Guo Xiang and Wang Bi 王弼 (226–249) are the two most important figures in the xuanxue 玄學 “arcane learning” or “Neo-Daoism” movement of early medieval China (third to sixth century C.E.), which combined elements of Confucianism with the thought of Daoist foundational texts, especially the Daode jing (Classic of the Dao and Virtue) and the Zhuangzi (Sayings of Master Zhuang). Focus of the movement was the promotion of the concept and practice of the sage-ruler as a catalyst for the regeneration of self and society, leading to the foundation of a worldly utopia. Guo’s is the earliest intact philosophical commentary to the Zhuangzi and one of the most widely read during premodern times. Cheng Xuanying composed the only subcommentary to Guo’s commentary. Its more explicit style is most helpful in deciphering Guo’s too often cryptic and elliptical statements. However, it also tends to shunt Guo’s statecraft reading of the Zhuangzi more in the direction of explicating philosophical and religious dimensions of the text. Whereas Guo’s observations about sagehood, self-fulfillment, and the good life largely focus on the sage-ruler and his relation to his people, Cheng’s approach tends more to explore issues of personal self-realization and individual enlightenment, and, as such, is far more “religious” than Guo’s. However, when it comes to accounts of birds and beasts, parodies and satires, which address the limitations, failures, delusions and faulty assumptions, narrow-mindedness, and other human foibles, both Guo and Cheng see them all rooted in self-conscious thought and knowledge, and thus deadly impediments to enlightenment. Other passages about beasts and birds use animal fables as exemplars of truth concerning endowed personal nature and the natural propensity to stay within the bounds of individual natural capacity. Since the commentaries of Guo and Cheng add important dimensions to these accounts, this study explores these as well.

Lineage Construction of the Southern School from Zhongli Quan to Liu Haichan and Zhang Boduan

Examining relevant Daoist scriptures and records, this article traces the lineage relationship of Zhang Boduan (d. 1082) to his predecessors. His immediate teacher supposedly was Liu Haichan, based on whose teachings he compiled his main work, the Wuzhen pian (Awakening to Perfection). First outlined by the Song scholar Lu Sicheng, the story was later expanded in various collections of immortals’ biographies. It is well known that the Southern School of internal alchemy (Golden Elixir) was constructed by Bai Yuchan and his disciples in the early 13th century. I show that this centers on the claim that Zhang Boduan, as Bai’s forerunner, received his teachings from Liu Haichan, a line that was then expanded to include the immortals Zhongli Quan and Lü Dongbin. I also suggest that the alchemical teaching of the Zhong-Lü tradition is particularly characterized by its emphasis on the dual cultivation of inner nature and life-destiny, focusing on the key concepts of clarity and stillness as well as nonaction, while centering on the reverted elixir of the golden fluid. The teaching matches the Daode jing (Book of the Dao and Its Virtue) instructions to “empty the mind, fill the belly, weaken the will, and strengthen the bones” (ch. 3). This emphasis may well be the reason the Zhong-Lü tradition superseded the Twofold Mystery school flourishing in the Tang and rose to the fore.

Conceptualizing the Interaction of Buddhism and Daoism in the Tang Dynasty: Inner Cultivation and Outer Authority in the Daode Jing Commentaries of Cheng Xuanying and Li Rong

This paper takes the different interpretations of one and the same sentences in the Daode jing as “inner cultivation” or “worldly power” respectively, in the commentaries of two closely related early Tang Daoist authors, Cheng Xuanying 成玄英 and Li Rong 李荣, as a starting point to approach the question of interaction of Buddhism and Daoism from a new angle. Instead of trying to pinpoint influences, origins, and derivatives, I propose to delineate philosophical discourses that cross the boundaries of the three teachings. Parallel excerpts from both commentaries show how Cheng reads the Daode jing as a guidebook for cultivation, and how Li Rong reads it as a guideline for governing. I argue that the differences could be read as the authors’ participation in different philosophical discourses, and I will show, for the case of Cheng Xuanying, how terminological overlap with contemporary Buddhist authors indicates that Buddhists and Daoists both participated in the discourse on inner cultivation with commentaries to their respective sacred scriptures.

What Child Is This?

Similarity across religious boundaries attracts many comparative theologians to the effort of their work. But what happens if the similarity is so striking that a doctrinal turf war erupts? Engaging the Chinese Taoist tradition, Bede Bidlack looks to the similar beginnings of two stories to ask, “What Child is This?” His chapter examines the birth narratives of Jesus Christ and Lord Lao, the sixth-century BCE author of the Daode jing, for clues to their roles as “saviors.” Instead of letting the comparison dissolve into a quarrel over competing truth claims––who is the real savior?–– the chapter allows the similarities to propel closer examination of what the texts claim about these divine children and the function of those claims within their original contexts. The result is a Christology that holds Jesus’ cosmic function in tension with his call for the temporal realm.