by An Liu
5. To act non-actively (wuwei ) is to not exert intentional action from the perspective of a fixed and limited ego. This is the famous dictum found throughout the Laozi.
6. The Potency (de ) of the Way is its manifestation, through which it serves as the subtle guiding force in all phenomena that enables them to spontaneously act in accord with their unique natures.
7. In early Chinese philosophical texts, autumn hair is a common metaphor for something minute. Animals of many species shed their undercoats at the beginning of summer and grow a new undercoat in the fall. The tip of a new hair as it emerges from the animal’s skin at that time is extremely fine. See also chap. 16, n. 13.
8. In passages involving human cognition in the Huainanzi, the shen (spirit, soul) is associated with consciousness and has the ability to concentrate on perceptions and thoughts.
9. The Five Phases (wuxing )—Wood, Fire, Earth, Metal, and Water—are the basic categories of vital energy (qi ) of which all phenomena are manifestations.
10. Here Potency is thought of as a rarified kind of qi that infuses all phenomena and enables them to flourish. The locus classicus for this materialistic interpretation of dao and de is Inward Training. See Roth 1999, 46, 48, 96.
11. These last two are ominous portents indicating Heaven’s displeasure. See Zhang Shuangdi 1997, 1:14n.37.
12. That is, the bagua , or “eight trigrams,” of the Yijing.
13. For these mythical landscapes, see 4.3.
14. This is a metaphor for the sorry state of present times in comparison with the era of the sage-kings of antiquity. The theme that government has declined from an earlier ideal state is pursued in several of the later chapters of the Huainanzi. For the metaphor of supernaturally talented charioteering, see also 6.6.
15. Wisdom and precedent are key ideas that the syncretic Daoist tradition criticizes in the Confucians. Casting these aside is one of their characteristic literary tropes. For details, see Harold D. Roth, “Who Compiled the Chuang Tzu?” in Chinese Texts and Philosophical Contexts: Essays Dedicated to Angus C. Graham, ed. Henry Rosemont Jr. (LaSalle, Ill.: Open Court Press, 1991), 95–128.
16. The authors are making a deliberate parallel between the dispassionate and accurate responses of the water mirror, the echo, and the shadow and the dispassionate and accurate responses of people’s innate nature which, however, become perverted when preferences arise. Only those who break through to the Way are able to set aside selfish preferences and retain their “true condition,” that is, the unbiased perception and knowing that is the inherent response of their intrinsic nature.
17. The “norms” (shu ) appear to be the characteristic patterns of things. For example, in 12.1, the “norms” of the Way are detailed as follows:
Non-action responded, “The Way that I know
can be weak or strong;
it can be soft or hard;
it can be yin or yang;
it can be dark or bright;
it can embrace or contain Heaven and Earth;
it can respond to or await the Limitless.
These are the norms by which I know the Way.
18. Zhan He and Juan Xuan were legendary fishermen of superlative skill; both were said to be natives of Chu.
19. Yi , or Archer Yi, is the legendary bowman who, when all ten of the world’s suns came out at once, shot nine of them out of the sky. Feng was his student.
20. This is a metaphor for the Way, which is completely without form.
21. Reading shu (numerical) for (methods), a frequently substituted homophone.
22. Gun was a mythical figure charged by sage-ruler Shun to tame the great flood; he attempted to do so by building dikes but failed to control the raging waters. For his failure, he was turned to stone.
23. We see no reason to accept Lau’s emendation of “three ren” (each ren is eight feet) to “nine ren,” which would be a ridiculous seventy-two feet high.
24. Yu , or Yu the Great, succeeded in draining the flood by excavating new channels for the overflowing rivers. He became, at least in legend, the founder of the Xia, China’s first dynastic state. For Gun and Yu, see Mark Edward Lewis, The Flood Myths of Early China (Albany: State University of New York Press, 2006); for an analysis of this passage, see 63.
25. Yi Yin, legendary minister of King Tang, the founder of the Shang dynasty, was famous for his cooking (presumably of dogs, among other viands). For a passage similar to this one, see 16.34.
26. Zaofu appears frequently in the Huainanzi as the paragon of chariot drivers; he was said to have been the charioteer of King Mu of Zhou (tenth century B.C.E.) on his legendary journey to the West.
27. Li Zhu was a famous (mythical) minister of Huangdi, the Yellow Emperor.
28. Kuang was a legendary music master. See also 6.1, 13.3, and 19.7; and Zhuangzi, chap. 2.
29. See n. 17.
30. The Divine Farmer is Shen Nong , mythical inventor of agriculture and sage-emperor of high antiquity.
31. See 15.1.
32. The ge , or “pueraria” (Pueraria lobata), is a plant with many creepers that can be used to make fine fabric for clothes.
33. He . The identity of this animal is uncertain. Commentators generally agree that it is the same as the he , which Morohashi’s Dai kanwa jiten (Great Sino-Japanese Dictionary) defines as a badger (mujina). However, the illustration accompanying that entry in Morohashi depicts a catlike animal, not at all resembling a badger. Grand dictionnaire Ricci de la langue chinoise, 7 vols. (Paris: Institut Ricci, 2001), 2:848, defines he as Nyctereutes procyonoides, sometimes called the raccoon dog in English but best known by its Japanese name, tanuki. (In 6.8 and 10.14, the raccoon dog, or tanuki, is referred to as a li .) We provisionally accept the definition of he as a badger. The passage here reflects an accurate observation of wildlife. The mynah is a bird of the subtropics that cannot survive in northern latitudes; the badger is an animal of dry northern plains and steppes that does not thrive in the moist lands of the south.
34. Compare the discussion in 19.4.
35. That is, Zhuan Xu; for the battle between these mythical titans, see 3.1.
36. This story is told more fully in the Zhuangzi (ZZ 28/82/1–4).
37. Laozi 76.
38. To anticipate (xian , to precede) or to act in advance of how situations will develop is a problem for the authors of the Huainanzi. It most certainly blocks the natural, spontaneous, and timely responses to situations as they arise and develop and causes much unnecessary thought, worry, and erroneous action. Acting spontaneously immediately after situations arise allows accurate responses.
39. Qu Boyu, an aristocrat (fl. sixth century B.C.E.) of the state of Wey, was known for his wisdom and humaneness.
40. Following the emendation suggested by Lau, HNZ 1/5/14. See also n. 7.
41. Laozi 43. According to William Boltz (private communication), it clearly reflects the guben, or “ancient text,” version that survives in the Fu Yi recension rather than the more common Wang Bi or He Shanggong version.
42. Emending yong (usefulness) to zu (ancestor), as in the Wenzi and following Liu Ji. See Zhang Shuangdi 1997, 1:88n.7.
43. Emending yin (abundant, flourishing) to yi (boldly), as in TPYL and following Zhuang Kuiji. See Lau, HNZ, 6n.6; and Zhang Shuangdi 1997, 1:88n.8.
44. These six lines of poetry have a similar syntax to the verses in the middle section of Laozi 15. Because they vary, it is possible that both are drawing on a common source, perhaps a collection of what I have called “early Daoist wisdom poetry” (Roth 1999, 190–92).
45. These two lines are from the Liu Ji redaction of 1501 and its descendants. Lau (HNZ, 6n.8) cites Wang Shumin as adding them as well.
46. Tools appear throughout the Huainanzi, often, as here, in metaphorical or symbolic senses.
The zhun , “level” (unlike the much later spirit-level familiar in the West, which features an air bubble in a closed liquid-filled tube), relied on the self-leveling property of water. It
consisted of a board into which a water reservoir and a narrow straight channel were carved. When the board was held exactly level, water from the reservoir would fill the channel to an even depth. Sometimes the zhun sometimes consisted of the board alone (for use on flat surfaces), and sometimes the board was fitted with a handle so that the level could be held up to a wall or other raised surface.
47. The sheng , “marking cord,” is a device consisting of a hollow box containing ink-soaked vegetable fiber, a string arranged to run through the ink box and be inked by it, and a reel or other device to control the string. It functions in the same way as a Western carpenter’s chalk line, to mark a straight line (e.g., to indicate where to cut a plank or stone). It can also be hung from a high position to function as a plumb line. Sheng is sometimes translated as “marking line” or “line marker,” which are appropriate renderings; it is also sometimes mistranslated as “measuring line” or “tape measure.” But this is an error because the principal function of the device is to mark straight lines, not to measure linear distance.
48. The Five Orbs (wu zang ) correspond to the five organs of the human physiology that were thought to be critical generative and coordinating junctures for the dynamic matrix of qi that composed the mind–body system: the lungs, liver, spleen, gall bladder, and kidneys. The term refers to organic systems, not just to the physical viscera; hence we speak of the pulmonary, renal, choleric, hepatic, and splenic orbs. See 7.2 and app. A.
49. We accept the interpretation of this line by Kusuyama Haruki , Enanji, in Shinshaku kanbun taikei (Tokyo: Meiji shōin, 1979–1988), 54:66.
50. Literally, “an owl.” The xiao (generally taken to be a kind of owl) is for the ancient Chinese a symbol of audacity and courage that in the Huainanzi is emblematic of perfected human beings. In Chinese mythology it is also known as the creature that devoured its own mother. See also 12.5.
51. In the Northern Song redaction, these four lines occur ten lines later in the text, after “You will never forget your mysterious support” (Lau, HNZ 1/7/14–15, 7n.3). They are totally missing in the Daozang redaction, but Lau adds them in the later position following the Northern Song redaction. We follow the Liu Ji redaction and its descendants in placing them here, at the beginning of a new section on the Way. This is also where Kusuyama places them (Enanji, 66). The textual evidence is equivocal, and we place these lines here because this location seems to better fit the flow of the argument.
52. According to the commentator Gao You, there was a Chu cult surrounding these mystic places. Le Blanc and Mathieu 2003, 36, identify them as two panoramic viewing locales in the Chu capital. They further identify the “Cloudy Dreams” as a vast marsh in the state of Chu and the “Sandy Hillock” as part of the pleasure garden of the tyrant Djou, last king of the Shang dynasty.
53. Zhang Shuangdi 1997, 1:104, cites the Gao You commentary to the LSCQ that attributes these pieces to these two mythical sage emperors. Mathieu further identifies them: the “nine songs” celebrated the accession of the mythical sage-emperor Shun, and the “six pieces” were favored music of the mythical sage-emperor Zhuan Xu, grandson of the Yellow Emperor and grandfather of Shun.
54. The kingfisher’s iridescent feathers were used in items of women’s jewelry, such as hair ornaments.
55. In their shift to the first person, these three lines appear to be a quotation from a source similar to Laozi 20: “I alone am inactive,” and so on.
56. How to do this is the main theme of the Zhuangzi, chap. 20, “Zhile” (Perfect Contentment).
57. The text attributes this licentious music to the last Shang capital, Zhaoge , and its northern suburbs, Beibi . Le Blanc and Mathieu 2003, 37, locate it in the northeast of the state of Qi in Henan.
58. The authors seem to be differentiating between two words commonly used to refer to a person’s interior experience, nei and zhong . We understand their use of the former to refer to the intrinsic nature of human beings and the latter to refer to a person’s interior life. Further, the authors imply that human nature also contains a supply of quintessential spirit, the essential vital energy of the spirit, which is the most important foundation of consciousness. Here they argue that we can waste this vital essence on extrinsic rather than intrinsic activities, to our detriment.
59. Following Wang Shumin’s emendation in Lau (HNZ 1/8/14n.3), and adding “you cannot control it” because of parallelism.
60. Xu You was a legendary hermit.
61. The “Techniques of the Mind” (xinshu ) refer at one and the same time to the methods of inner cultivation and the two texts in the Guanzi collection of the same name. These techniques are said to strip away desires and preferences from consciousness. For details, see Roth 1999.
62. You fully realize the Way as the unifying ground of your being and the myriad things in a conscious experience that is devoid of all opposites and in which you are in a deep trance and appear to others to be dead. This recalls the description in Zhuangzi 2 of the sage Nanguo Ziqi, whose “body is like withered wood and mind is like dead ashes” (ZZ 2/3/15).
63. Yao Niao was a legendary horse, renowned for speed and endurance.
64. The “Emblems of King Wu” were said to have been composed by the Duke of Zhou to celebrate the conquest of the Shang. Along with the “Plumes of the Pheasant,” they are epitomes of artistic expression. See Zhang Shuangdi 1997, 1:115; and Le Blanc and Mathieu 2003, 337n.14.
65. Because sages totally penetrate the Mechanism of Heaven—which is a metaphor for the normative natural order—they are no more affected by living in exalted or demeaned circumstances than are the noises of crows and magpies affected by their climate.
66. Accepting Lau’s (HNZ, 9n.3) emendation, which adds the character de (to realize) directly in front of “the truth of our nature and destiny.”
67. The gui , “compass,” is a device for inscribing circles. Unlike the draftsman’s dividers familiar in Western usage, the Han-era gui compass is often depicted as a device in the shape of a lowercase “h” having a long vertical member to mark the center point, an adjustable horizontal radial member, and a shorter vertical member supporting a scribing device to mark the circle itself.
68. The ju , “square,” is a carpenter’s square. It is usually depicted as a right-angle (rather than T-shaped) device, sometimes braced diagonally.
69. The basic meaning of gou is “hook” or “angle.” As the name of a tool, we translate it as “angle rule.” The gou seems to have been similar to a modern bevel-square, used to mark and duplicate variable angles. It also was used to make sets of objects, such as chariot axles, in a range of diameters. The gou probably resembled a ju “square,” except that the arms of the device would have been free to assume any desired angle and it would have included some means of fixing the arms in place at that angle for as long as necessary.
A difficulty with this word is that it has multiple meanings. Depending on context, it can mean “hook” or “angle” (as in si gou , the “Four Hooks” of the heavens [see 3.16] or of the liubo board or TLV mirror), or “hook” as in “fishhook” (as in 1.6); or as a kind of weapon, which we translate as “battle-hook.” See 12.34. The appropriate meaning is not always clear.
70. Note the contrast between the darkened spirit here and the exalted spiritlike clarity spoken of in 1.16.
71. A similar argument is made in chap. 7.
Two
ACTIVATING THE GENUINE
“ACTIVATING THE Genuine” is the second of the eight “root” or foundational chapters of the text and serves as a companion to chapter 1, “Originating in the Way,” in its overarching cosmology and self-cultivation themes. While “Originating in the Way” is very much indebted to the Laozi, “Activating the Genuine” is thoroughly steeped in the Zhuangzi, three of whose authorial voices recognized by A. C. Graham are powerfully represented in its pages.1
All the principal themes of chapter 2 are found in the Zhuangzi, although they are not, in all cases, intended to be
understood in the same way as in the source text. These themes include cosmogony, the precariousness of life, the existence of archaic utopias governed by spiritually perfected sage-rulers, the devolution of history and the degradation of spiritual realization that have occurred over time, the nature of perfected human beings, the Way as the source of the entire universe, the spiritual perfection of sages who through apophatic inner cultivation return to the wellsprings of the spirit that lie deep within human nature, and the importance of the right balance of nature and destiny in the human ability to attain sage-rulership and spiritual fulfillment.
The Chapter Title
The title of this chapter is “Chu zhen” , which we translate as “Activating the Genuine.” The word chu is a verb meaning “to begin,” “to undertake,” “to move,” and “to set in motion.”2 “To activate” also falls within this range of meanings and best fits the current context, because the chapter assumes that the reader will actively pursue a program of self-cultivation whose ultimate goal is realizing zhen. Zhen is a noun and an adjective meaning “real” or “genuine.” The “genuine” of the title is one of a number of metaphors used in the chapter to refer to the dao, or Way, and its various aspects. (Others include the Unhewn, the Great Clod, and the Great Ancestor.) In this context, the Genuine is the deepest layer of our intrinsic nature, that which is grounded in the Way itself. To activate it is to attain Potency. The Way lies in all of us as the ground of our existence but usually remains outside our awareness because human beings have been led astray by their senses into desiring material things and power and fame. By following such apophatic inner-cultivation practices as outlined in the Zhuangzi and other early sources, like “Inward Training” (Nei ye) in the Guanzi, human beings are able to realize the Way in terms of their concrete daily experiences. To do this is to “Activate the Genuine.” The term zhen also occurs in the compound zhenren “Genuine Persons.” In earlier Daoist lore and in the text of the Huainanzi itself, three paragons of human perfection are described in terms that overlap and are to some extent interchangeable: the sage (shengren), the Perfected (zhiren), and the Genuine (zhenren). All are people who have discovered the Way that lies within them.