by An Liu
Qi is a central concept to virtually all the cosmological, cultural, and political concerns of the Huainanzi. It is especially important to the text’s theory of personal cultivation. Following a venerable body of cultivation and medical lore, the Huainanzi conceptualizes the human body as a dynamic system engineered to accumulate, refine, and circulate different forms of qi. Cultivation thus centers on facilitating and perfecting the mind–body system’s faculties for collecting and refining qi, a process in which breathing and breath control figure prominently. When qi is being used in a context of personal cultivation, we have translated it as “vital energy” or “vital breath” (when it refers literally to the intake of breath during meditation). Otherwise, we have left it untranslated.
qing feelings, emotional responses, dispositional responsiveness, genuine responses, instinctive responses, disposition, true or genuine or essential qualities
Qing is a profoundly multivalent and versatile term that is featured prominently in a wide range of early texts. Its most basic meaning in the Huainanzi is “feeling”: the emotional responses of joy, anger, desire, grief, and fear all are exemplary qing. In accordance with older texts (such as the text Xing zi ming chu , archaeologically recovered at Guodian), the Huainanzi conceives of these emotional responses as inherent dispositions originally present in human beings as a product of nature. In its pristine state, our mind is still; when we are stimulated by external events, our mind responds with a qing. This “feeling” is understood as a wave of qi in the originally placid matrix of the mind-body system. As it evolves, this wave of qi creates motions and sounds, such as laughing and dancing in the case of joy or screaming and fleeing in the case of fear. Such reactions are not learned but are built into the dynamic structure of the mind–body system and become manifest when the conditions are right. It is important to note that the Huainanzi (along with other earlier texts) does not clearly distinguish between a particular instance of emotional response and the inborn disposition from which it arises; for example, both a particular moment of joy and the ability to feel joy are labeled qing. “Feeling” is thus often inadequate as a translation of qing, since in the Huainanzi’s theory of human psychology this concept encompasses both what in English would be called “feeling” and what would be termed “instinct” or “disposition.”
A related meaning of qing denotes any condition or quality of a thing or person that is genuine or authentic. Just as emotional responses are considered irreducible elements of the human condition from birth, any characteristic that is original to and inseparable from a particular phenomenon may be described as qing. When qing is used in the text in this sense, we have translated it as “genuine qualities” or “essential qualities.”
Throughout the text, we have varied our translations of the term in accordance with its meaning in context.
qingxing disposition and nature, dispositional nature
Qing and xing are closely linked concepts in the Huainanzi, as the text conceives of emotional responses as constituent components of nature. Whereas xing, “nature,” denotes the totality of all the potentials and inherent dispositions present in the human being at birth, qing denotes the particular affective dispositions subsumed within xing. Qingxing often appears as a binome in the Huainanzi, denoting the inborn capacities of human beings in their particular and global aspects. Where the text enumerates them separately, we have translated qingxing as “disposition and nature” or “feelings and nature.” And where the text uses qing to modify xing, we have translated it as “dispositional nature.”
quna expediency, heft, weight
The quan is the weight used in conjunction with a steelyard or a set of balanced scales or, by extension, the entire weighing apparatus. From this meaning evolved the usage of the character in the Huainanzi and other ancient philosophical prose to denote “expediency.” Quan entails weighing the exigencies of the moment against the imperatives of morality, and it refers to an act that violates a moral precept yet ultimately serves the greater good. Another technical usage of quan occurs in the Huainanzi’s discussion of military affairs (especially in chapter 15). There quan denotes a form of potential power that is intrinsic to a combatant before going into battle, an advantage that can “tip the scales” and lead to victory after the combat has begun. Examples are the training of the troops or the education of the commander. In these contexts, we have translated quan as “heft.” In its literal meaning of “weight,” quan is one of the six exemplary tools (along with the compass, square, marking cord, level, and the beam of a steelyard or scale) posited as standards (du) to guide the ruler’s conduct under various circumstances (see 5.15).
ren Humaneness, humane
Humaneness is the cardinal virtue of Confucius and his later disciples. It generally refers to an ability to empathize with others and treat them with compassion. For most ancient Confucians, personal perfection could be understood in terms of this virtue: the path to sagehood was one of ever-deepening and expansive Humaneness. The Huainanzi does not generally assign Humaneness such exalted status but agrees with the Daodejing that neither the Way nor the sage is ultimately humane. The Huainanzi does state, though, that Humaneness is an indispensable principle for organizing human relations and human society in the current age. Humaneness is often paired with Rightness (yi), as the Way (dao) is often paired with Potency (de).
ru Confucian
Ru is an archaic term that originally referred to a ceremonial office at the royal court. During the Warring States period, it was adopted as the self-identifying sobriquet of Confucius’s followers. In accordance with conventional English usage, we have translated this term as “Confucian.” During the Han period, the parameters of the “Confucian” community were quite fluid. Those who considered themselves ru generally shared an esteem for Confucius as the greatest teacher of the classical age and a reverence for those texts identified by Confucius and his disciples as canonical (most often including, but not necessarily limited to, the “Five Classics”: the Changes, Odes, Documents, Rites, and Spring and Autumn Annals). The Huainanzi is generally very critical of the Confucians as being too narrowly focused on cultural contingencies and phenomenal concerns. There were reportedly Confucians at the court of Liu An, however, and their influence can be seen in the prevalence of quotations from and allusions to the texts of the Five Classics throughout the Huainanzi. Although the Huainanzi denies that Confucian values embody ultimate truth or are universally efficacious, it does acknowledge the limited validity of Confucian moral teachings as essential to social harmony in latter ages.
shen the spirit, spirits, spiritlike, divine, god
“Spirit” is a versatile word with many meanings and subtleties of meaning. In the ancient ancestral religion, spirits were powerful deities and the shades of departed ancestors who wielded power over the living world and had to be propitiated and appeased by sacrifice. The Huainanzi frequently uses “spirit” to signify this meaning, providing a detailed discussion of various spirits and their cults. However, throughout the Huainanzi, “spirit” also means an integral aspect of all living human beings, the “ghost in the machine” that is the site of all awareness and cognition. There is no contradiction in these usages, as the Huainanzi assumes that spirits may exist in embodied and disembodied forms. The spirit that today animates an individual’s living body may become an object of the ancestral cult tomorrow after that person’s death.
It is important to note that whether the Huainanzi is discussing embodied or disembodied spirits, it does not distinguish between a “spiritual” and a “material” realm. All spirits are thought to be a part of the same energetic system of qi from which all matter is composed. Spirits are not tangible or visible, but this does not mean that they lack material substance. They are merely composed of qi in a highly ethereal and dynamic state that is nonetheless equivalent to the qi from which all grosser matter is formed.
During a person’s lifetime, the spirit is the animating impulse of t
he body and the energetic structure in which the mind is housed. Spirit and body form a single organic system of qi; they are thus pragmatically inseparable but analytically distinct. In the same way that one may have an injured hand but a healthy eye, one may have a sound body but a disordered spirit, and vice versa. Despite occupying autonomous realms of activity, spirit and body interpenetrate through the medium of qi and remain mutually influential. The techniques of personal cultivation discussed in the Huainanzi thus engage both poles of this spectrum, encompassing contemplative meditations focused on the spirit and dietary and yogic regimens targeting the physiological processes of the body.
Spirit and mind are likewise analytically distinct. The thoughts, memories, and emotional dispositions that constitute the mind are comparable to the ridges and figures of a seal pressed into the “wax” of the spirit. Although our mind embodies our ordinary experience of consciousness, our spirit is always present as the basic substrate of awareness. This is where the spirit is merged with and partakes of the impulsive dynamism of the Way itself; thus the goals of apophatic personal cultivation are often described in the Huainanzi as an effort to escape “mind” in favor of the unmediated experience of “spirit.” The more the ordinary contents of consciousness are stripped away, the closer one approaches fusion with the cosmic ultimate and embodiment of its unlimited potential.
Like many ancient Chinese words, shen has both nominal and adjectival uses. When shen is used adjectivally in association with the ancestral spirits or other deities, we have translated it as “divine.” However, the implication of spirit in the energetic matrix of qi also gives rise to a particular modifying use of shen that is related to, but not identical with, this meaning of “divine.”
The remarkable properties of consciousness—its incredible sensitivity and speed—were understood to be products of the highly dynamic form of qi from which spirit was composed (see jingshen). The same was true for the extraordinary powers displayed by disembodied spirits like the departed ancestors. They could know conditions thousands of miles away, for example, because they could transverse such distances at the speed of thought (that is, in no time at all). The same type of highly rarefied and dynamic qi that composed human and ancestral spirits was thought to be present elsewhere in nature and to give rise to correspondingly marvelous phenomena. Lightning, magnetism, and the mechanism of cosmic resonance by which events separated by vast gulfs of space simultaneously influence one another (see ganying) were thought to evince the presence and operation of “spirit qi” (that is, the same type of qi of which spirits are composed) and are described as shen. When the Huainanzi uses shen in this mode, we have translated it as “spiritlike.”
shen person, the self
Shen denotes the individual person in all his or her physiological, psychological, and social aspects. It encompasses what in English would be identified as the body as well as the intellect and the personality. The shen therefore is the locus of individual personhood, but in many usages of the term, what in modern European and American culture might be deemed “externalities”—such as manner of speech, dress, and deportment, as well as acquired or inherited status—were also understood as component aspects of the “person.” The Huainanzi generally agrees with the long tradition of self-cultivation theory in focusing on the “person,” but distinguishes between more and less fundamental aspects of the person in the formulation of its cultivation regime.
Two related terms are “return to the self” (fanji ) and “return to one’s nature” (fanxing ) (see fan).
sheng or shengren the sage
Following many texts of the classical period, the Huainanzi uses the term “the sage” to denote the highest attainable level of human perfection. Sages have ultimate insight and are ingeniously creative. They have power not only to bring harmony to their own personal lives and environment but also to fashion standards and institutions on behalf of humanity at large. Indeed, sages in the Huainanzi are conceived of as a cosmic force unto themselves, as they exert a beneficent influence on the universe as a whole.
Like the Confucian Five Classics, the Huainanzi credits great sages of high antiquity, like Fuxi, with creating the seminal fundaments of human civilization. Unlike the Confucian canon, however, the Huainanzi does not locate the chief efficacy of the sage in the past. It is not enough to preserve and transmit the achievements of antiquity; the maintenance and harmonious operation of effective political and cultural institutions requires the guiding hand of a sage in the present day. The Huainanzi underscores the present-day political role of the sage as the ruler at the apex of the empire’s political structure who is charged with becoming a sage and/or enlisting the aid of sage-ministers.
This emphasis on the political role of the sage stems partly from the Huainanzi’s conception of how sagehood is achieved and the relationship of the sage to the cosmic Way. The sage of the Huainanzi is much closer to that of the Daodejing than that of the Confucian classics, as he is not only a moral or an ethical paragon or a repository of knowledge. The sage does not achieve sagehood only through study of the phenomenal world or the imparted wisdom of past ages but especially through a program of apophatic personal cultivation centered on practices of contemplative meditation and yogic regimens. He thereby nurtures and purifies the energies of the mind–body system and brings consciousness into perfect alignment with the cosmic Way, effectively becoming an embodiment of the Way. In mind, body, speech, and deed, the sage perfectly embodies the potent dynamism of the Way, and all his responses to emerging circumstances have the same spontaneous efficacy.
Without such a leader, the Huainanzi asserts, human government cannot work. Both the cosmos and human society evolve so rapidly that it is never enough to reproduce the practices of the past. Each age requires a sage who embodies the Way in his person and can thus perceive through his penetrating insight how standards and institutions must be configured in the present day to bring the human community into harmony, both internally and with the underlying patterns of the cosmos.
The achievement of sagehood is thus the ultimate hallmark of political legitimacy, as the role of the sage is the cornerstone on which the entire imperial edifice envisioned by the Huainanzi is built. This would seem to create the potential for profound instability, as in a vast empire it is more likely for a sage to arise among the ruler’s myriad subjects than for the ruler himself to achieve this lofty goal. The Huainanzi is aware of this problem and thus states that even a sage is incapable of overthrowing an established imperial government unless it has already descended into chaos. A sitting ruler thus does not have to perfectly embody the sage-ideal in order to secure his dynasty’s throne; it is enough that he recognize the “sage-imperative” and strive toward becoming a sage, thereby staving off the disorder that would make his dynasty prone to usurpation.
shenhua spiritlike transformation, spirit transformation
Shenhua denotes a transformational effect that transcends the ordinary physical limits of time and space. This phrase is most often employed in reference to the sage, who is able to exert a pacifying and edifying influence on his subjects from even a vast distance. This is not regarded as a function of moral example but as a marvelous dynamism operating through the physical medium of qi. In this sense, it is called “spirit transformation” because it displays the same qualities as the activities of spirits and is driven by the radiating influence of the sage’s own highly refined and potent spirit. Chapter 9 discusses spirit transformation at length, equating it with the transformational effect that spring and summer have on the living world during the calendar year.
shenming spirit illumination, spiritlike illumination
“Spirit illumination” denotes an aspect of both the Way and the sage throughout the text of the Huainanzi. At one point, the text asks rhetorically whether spirit illumination is comparable to sunlight (see 12.44) and answers that although like sunlight it is all-pervading, unlike sunlight spirit illumination cannot be blocked by window
shutters or doors. Spirit illumination thus signifies the faculty by which both the Way and the sage (who perfectly embodies the Way in his person [see shengren]) comprehend and coordinate the entire phenomenal universe. Although when making a comparison between shenming and sunlight the text may be speaking figuratively, it seems likely that the Huainanzi envisions spirit illumination as having an actual physical substrate, a form of qi that is even more subtle, suffusive, potent, and dynamic than light (see jingshen). This is why one of the most often cited characteristics of the sage is that he “communicates with spirit illumination.” In other words, the abundant and highly refined qi of the sage’s spirit (see shen ) is seamlessly merged with the vast field of spirit illumination that pervades the entire universe. Through this medium, therefore, the sage can be aware of distant conditions and influence far-off events.
shi affair, task, event, phenomenon, effort, practicalities, management
Shi has a wide range of meanings. In its most common usage, we translate it as “affair,” referring to all the discrete undertakings that must be accomplished and all the various contingencies that may be encountered in the conduct of government. One of the Huainanzi’s main goals is to demonstrate how the Way finds expression in affairs. In this sense, shi has a broader significance, in that it need not be confined to the political or even the human realm. Almost any contingent occurrence or fact may be described as a shi, and in places where it is clearly being used in this broader sense, we have translated it as “event” or “phenomenon.”