by An Liu
8.11
In ancient times when the sage-kings occupied the throne, governance and instruction were equitable; humaneness and love were harmoniously blended.35
High and low were of one mind;
ruler and minister were friendly and in accord [with each other].
Clothing and food were in surplus;
families supplied people with the necessities.
Fathers were compassionate and sons were filial;
older brothers were nurturing and younger brothers compliant;
in life there was no resentment;
in death there was no regret.
The world was harmonious and in concord,
and the people obtained what they desired.
People were happy with one another but without the means to give expression to [this happiness] and bestow it [on one another]. Therefore the sages devised ritual and music for them so as to harmonize and regulate them.
In the government of later ages,
hunting and fishing were heavily taxed;
gate tolls and market fees were sharply increased;
the use of wetlands and bridges was prevented and prohibited.
There was no place to deploy nets and snares;
no advantage to using mattock and plow.
The people’s strength was exhausted by corvée labor;
their wealth and necessities were depleted in order to pay taxes.
Residents had nothing to eat;
travelers had no provisions;
the old were not nurtured;
the dead were not buried.
Wives were prostituted and children sold,
in order to meet the demands of the higher-ups,
but even so they were unable to satisfy them.
Clueless common men and simple women all were left with their hearts in turmoil and flux and with their wills sick and sorrowful. Under such circumstances, to strike the great bells, to pound the resounding drums, to blow on pipes and mouth organs, to pluck qin and se, would be to cast away the basis of music [itself]. [8/66/6–12]
In ancient times, the demands of those on high were light, and the people’s needs were met.
Princes bestowed their Moral Potency;
ministers amply fulfilled [their duty of] loyalty.
Fathers behaved compassionately;
sons outdid themselves in filiality.
Each attained the [proper degree of] love, and there were no feelings of resentment among them. The three years’ mourning was not imposed by force, but it was accomplished [nevertheless, so that]
people heard music but were not joyous,
ate delicacies but did not find them sweet;
They were mindful of thoughts of the deceased and were unable to leave off [thinking about them].
In later ages, habits were dissipated and customs grew depraved.
Lusts and appetites proliferated;
Ritual and Rightness were eradicated.
Rulers and ministers deceived one another;
fathers and sons distrusted one another.
Anger and rancor filled every breast;
thoughtful minds were entirely extinct.
Those who wore mourning clothes and tied on unbleached headcloths
fooled around and laughed in the midst [of their mourning].
Although they attained the full three years, they cast away the fundamental principle of mourning. [8/66/14–17]
8.12
In ancient times, the Son of Heaven had his royal domain, and the Lords of the Land each had the same [domains as called for by their rank]; each took care of his own portion, and none was permitted to usurp another. If there was one who did not follow the kingly Way,
who was cruel and oppressive to the masses,
who fought over land and tried to usurp territory,
who disrupted the government and violated prohibitions,
who when summoned [to the king’s court] would not come,
who when given commands would not carry them out,
who when forbidden [things] would not desist,
who when admonished would not alter,
then [the Son of Heaven] raised an army and went forth to punish him,
executing the prince,
getting rid of his supporters,
shutting his ancestral tombs,
sacrificing at their altars of the soil,
[and] then selecting by divination one of his sons or grandsons to replace him.
But in later ages, [rulers]
endeavored to enlarge their lands and encroach on the territory of others, forming alliances ceaselessly,
raised armies for unrighteous causes and mounted punitive expeditions against the guiltless;
killed innocent people and cut off the lineages of the former sages.
Large countries set off to attack [others];
small countries built fortifications to defend themselves.
[Such rulers] confiscated people’s oxen and horses,
took captive their sons and daughters,
destroyed their ancestral temples,
carried off their weighty treasures,
[so that] streams of blood flowed for a thousand li,
and sun-bleached skeletons choked the wild lands.
To satisfy the desires of greedy lords—this is not how armies should be managed. [8/66/19–24]
Now the purpose of armies is to punish cruelty, not to commit cruelties.
The purpose of music is to bring forth concord [in human relations], not to create licentiousness.
The purpose of mourning is to bring about a consummation of grief, not to create what is meretricious.
Thus,
there is a Way of serving close relations, and love is the principal means of serving them.
There is substance in the [rituals of] attendance at court, and respect is its highest expression.
There are rituals for the implementation of mourning, and grief is their principal quality.
There are techniques for the use of arms, and Rightness is their foundation.
If the foundation is established, then the Way can be implemented;
if the foundation is harmed, then the Way will be abandoned. [8/66/26–29]
Translated by John S. Major
1. Tai qing . Another possible translation would be “Supreme Clarity,” as the Chinese term means both “clarity” and “purity.”
2. Compare this and the following three lines with the opening lines of 20.1.
3. “Flowing yellow” (liu huang ) usually means “sulfur”; here it evidently signifies an auspicious plant of some sort, not otherwise identifiable.
4. Gongshu was a legendary artisan, also known as Gongsun Ban or Lu Ban; under the last name, he appears in 11.17.
5. Junlu , evidently a bamboo of some type, but not reliably identifiable.
6. Yi qi . This is a rich term with several layers of meaning. Here it denotes “a single (unitary, undivided) qi,” “unifying the qi,” and even “the qi of the Grand One” (taiyi ). The term should be understood in all these senses simultaneously.
7. This is a reference to the calendar of twenty-four solar periods (jieqi). See 3.18.
8. This microcosm–macrocosm is developed further in 7.1.
9. This section reads as an expansion of, or a commentary on, Laozi 38, which was the first chapter of the Laozi in some Han versions of that work (e.g., the Mawangdui A and B Laozi texts). See Robert G. Henricks, Lao Tzu Te Tao Ching (New York: Ballantine Books, 1989). To a Han audience, this would have been an authoritative and immediately recognizable text.
10. The primitive society of high antiquity is thus compared with the state of undifferentiated matter-energy (hun ming ) that preceded the coming-into-being of the phenomenal world. See the opening section of chap. 3.
11. The Chinese character is used to write both the word yue (music) and the word le (joy); thus this sentence contains a double-entendre impossible to convey grac
efully in English: “They would not find any music/joy in them.”
12. This line is a close paraphrase of several lines in Laozi 38 and echoes Laozi 18.1: dadao fei, you renyi , “[Where] the great Way is dispensed with, there is Humaneness and Rightness.”
13. Bo Yi was the legendary leader of the Eastern Yi tribe who served Shun as a gamekeeper.
14. Chui was a mythical craftsman and master woodworker to the divine emperor Di Ku, for whom he made musical instruments, bows, plows, boats, marking cords, and other contrivances. See Anne Birrell, Chinese Mythology: An Introduction (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1993), 53, 63.
15. Giving something to another causes the giver to accumulate Potency (de ) by creating an obligation on the part of the person who receives. The Perfected Ruler described here can bestow or receive without reference to calculations of obligation and reciprocity.
16. Yaoguang (Gemlike Brilliance) is the name of the third (and final) star in the “handle” of the Northern Dipper constellation. As the indicator of where the “dial” of the Dipper is pointing in its annual circuit around the sky, it plays a significant role in some forms of Chinese astrology. Another star, Zhaoyao , which forms an extension of the Dipper’s handle, is used similarly to designate the successive months in chap. 5. See the introduction to chap. 5, n. 4.
Adopting the stance of wuwei (taking no purposive action) and bringing about results without striving for them, the ruler is a microcosmic analogue of the macrocosmic Yaoguang, which impersonally dispenses good and ill fortune to the states as it revolves through its annual round.
17. Rong Cheng was a (mythical) official of the Yellow Emperor credited with inventing the calendar.
18. For a quite different view of archaic society, see 19.1.
19. These mythical monsters are mentioned in various Warring States and Han works; they seem to be paradigms of harmful natural forces. Chayu is a dragon-headed monster armed with a shield and spear; Nine Gullet is a Hydra-like monster; Typhoon (lit., “big wind”) is conceived of as a gigantic, malevolent bird.
20. Laozi 1.
21. Five semidivine mythical rulers of high antiquity; the usual list includes the Yellow Emperor, Zhuan Xu, Di Ku, Yao, and Shun.
22. That is, the three royal dynasties of antiquity: Xia, Shang, and Zhou.
23. This formulaic phrase is repeated in 19.3.
24. The same image is found in 19.7.
25. Odes 195, “Xiaomin.” The poem as a whole is a warning to behave with caution in an age of bad counsel.
26. Liu lü () means both “six pitch pipes” and “six standards.”
27. Compare 1.1.
28. See 5.15.
29. Compare this and the following five lines with 20.1.
30. That is, his head resembles the roundness of Heaven, and the outline of his two feet side by side resembles the squareness of Earth. This image is also found in 7.2.
31. These are the eyes, ears, mouth, and heart (mind), as elucidated several lines below this one.
32. Wuxing here appears to be used in its Mencian sense of five modes of conduct—Humaneness, Wisdom, Rightness, Ritual Correctness, and Sagehood—rather than (as is usually the case in the Huainanzi) as the Five Phases: Wood, Fire, Earth, Metal, and Water.
33. We drop the words ge and jie from this sentence, following Yu Yue’s commentary. See Zhang Shuangdi 1997, 1:879–80n.2.
34. The text here may be corrupt; the reference to “movement” (dong ) appears to belong with the previous paragraph, while the reference to “anger” (nu ) appears to belong with the following paragraph. But commentators make no suggestions for emendations, and we have translated the text as given.
35. This passage contrasts in an interesting way with the idealized picture of archaic agrarian primitivism in Laozi 80, the famous passage that begins “Let the state be small and the populace sparse.” While the Laozi envisions small village communities willfully oblivious of one another’s affairs, the vision of the archaic era in 8.11 is of a substantial empire marked by unity and concord between ruler and subjects.
Nine
THE RULER’S TECHNIQUES
“THE RULER’S Techniques” begins by stating: “The ruler’s techniques [consist of] establishing non-active management and carrying out wordless instructions.” This serves notice that the chapter is not a handbook of tips and tricks for an energetic bureaucrat but a comprehensive plan for achieving the kind of effective self-cultivation, charismatic appeal, and radiant moral force required for a person to be a true universal monarch, a “Son of Heaven.” The ruler’s non-active orientation is made possible by time-tested techniques that have proved efficacious in creating a harmonious and just society in which the common people flourish and officials support their ruler as spokes to the hub. His ability to instruct and yet remain silent as he does so lies in the wondrous power of vital energy (qi), which, through self-cultivation, he possesses in quintessential form. By means of this Quintessential qi, which in its most refined state is referred to in this chapter interchangeably as the Utmost Essence (zhijing) or spirit (shen), the ruler can avail himself of the Way of Heaven above and transform the people below.1 In this manner, the ruler achieves a kind of profound and pervasive resonance with his subjects. Stirring their hearts as a fine melody would, such “wordless instructions” are infinitely more persuasive, far-reaching, and influential than any verbal command or purposeful act could be.
The Chapter Title
We have translated the title of this chapter, “Zhu shu” , as “The Ruler’s Techniques.” Zhu is the most general of several possible Chinese words that could be translated as “ruler.” A Zhou-dynasty word known from bronze inscriptions and early literature (but not from Shang oracle bones), its earliest meaning seems to be “one who presides” (for example, over a ceremony) or “host” (of a banquet). Two close cognates are zhu , “to prop up,” and zhu , “pillar” (specifically, a load-bearing pillar of a building). The Huainanzi authors had other choices: this chapter could have been entitled “Jun shu” , “The Prince’s Techniques”; or “Wang shu” , “The King’s Techniques”; or even “Huangdi shu” , “The Emperor’s Techniques.” The choice of a word with broad implications of “presiding, axial, upholding” therefore was surely deliberate.
Shu straightforwardly means “techniques,” the ways in which an expert exercises his profession or carries out some task. The word implies skill, practice, and specialized knowledge but also a kind of fluency of action beyond verbal description. To exercise shu is to act with an ease possible only as a result of long and diligent practice. Shu was a word much on the minds of late Warring States and Han thinkers because it fit the prevailing ideal of a person whose actions went beyond mere skill or expertise and were derived from being attuned to the Way.
The well-known translation of this chapter by Roger Ames is entitled “The Art of Rulership.”2 We hope that our translation, “The Ruler’s Techniques,” conveys more precisely that this chapter outlines the specific “Techniques of the Way” (dao shu) that enable an individual to succeed as a ruler.
Summary and Key Themes
“The Ruler’s Techniques” describes the methods that a ruler should use to create a beneficent and orderly government and stay on top of it. As the authors assert: “Thus, with techniques, one rules others; without techniques, one is ruled by them” (9.24). As the chapter makes clear, the list of techniques required for successful rule is long and daunting.
Practicing Non-Action
The first and perhaps most important technique to be identified is “non-active management.” With a quiet and tranquil demeanor, impartial and detached, the ruler delegates to his underlings the day-to-day responsibilities of running the government. As the authors expressly point out, this does not mean that the ruler should become inert and do nothing. Even though he acts, nothing emanates from him personally (9.23), so his policies are not biased by his private preferences (9.25), nor are they restricted by the limits of
his individual intelligence (9.9–9.11). Rather, the techniques he implements conform to the patterns of the Way implicit in the natural propensities of things. For example, because the ruler adjusts his policies to the yin–yang rhythm of the four seasons, the people find those policies suitable because they seem natural. With non-action as his foundational orientation, the ruler can implement laws and dispense rewards and punishments without being swayed by personal bias. Freed from the quotidian concerns of ruling, his role as “model or gnomon for the world” is given due prominence, and the weighty responsibility of transforming the people moves to the foreground.
Transforming the People by Means of Quintessential qi
If you refine your heavenly and earthly qi, the authors argue, you can merge with the Grand One and, through the Grand One, avail yourself of the unlimited and mysterious Way of Heaven (9.2). Readers of the Huainanzi have already encountered (in chapter 7) a detailed description of the meditative regimens that foster refinement of the bodily energies, and an argument for why the ruler will obtain benefits from adhering to them. “The Ruler’s Techniques” returns to that theme and considers the public and political implications of the ruler’s self-cultivation. The ruler uses his Quintessential qi because, as with the technique of non-action, he needs it to conduct the grand symphony of transformation on the universal scale envisioned by the Huainanzi authors.
The ruler transforms the people most effectively by approaching them not with words but through the demonstrational power of his moral conduct, through a projection of his Quintessential qi in a way that naturally evokes a response from everyone within range: “A great shout can be heard at most only within a hundred paces, but the human will can project over a thousand li” (9.4). The transformation of the people is made easier when the ruler is virtuous and holds on to the handles of authority and positional advantage (9.26). Thus the ruler’s power and his ability to motivate his officials and to persuade the people to do his will depend on charisma rather than coercion: “By proclaiming laws and establishing rewards, [however], one cannot alter habits and change customs because sincerity of heart would not be stirred” (9.7).