by Livia Kohn
The Taiping jing explains the interaction of sins and diseases by first pointing out that there are three key factors in the universe: Heaven, Earth, and humanity. They are the three forms into which primordial energy ( yuanqi ) divided at the time of creation (66.236). This primordial energy is the root of all, the spirit root ( shen’gen) of all existence. The spirit root divides into the three factors, then also manifests in three psychosomatic factors: spirit ( shen) associated with Heaven; essence ( jing ) associated with Earth; and the vital energy ( qi ) of harmony associated with humanity (154.728).
Within this cosmic system, human beings contain the powers of Heaven and Earth and represent a microcosm of the larger universe.
The roundness of the human head resembles Heaven; the square shape of the feet imitates Earth; the four limbs match the four seasons; and so on (35.36).5 According to the Taiping jing, Heaven, Earth, and humanity are, therefore, equally made from primordial energy; they are not only connected intimately but also stand in direct analogy to one another. The intimate connection between Heaven, Earth, and humanity, then, leads to the phenomenon that when the ruler follows the Dao, the proper way of the cosmos, Heaven and Earth rejoice; when he or she loses the Dao, disasters and strange occurrences appear (18.17). In an analogous way, when the ruler in the human body—the microcosmic replica of Heaven and Earth—loses the Dao and commits evil, the body suffers disasters, that is, it falls ill.
Just as disasters visit the planet as direct effects from Heaven, so the human body is subject to immediate reverberations of its evil deeds.
Just as Heaven loves good and loathes evil, so whenever a human being commits a bad deed, Heaven manifests its displeasure by visiting sickness upon his or her body. According to the Taiping jing, sickness
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is, therefore, the expression of displeasure at human misdeeds on the side of the spirit(s) of Heaven ( tianshen) and not the automatic effect of an imbalance or disharmony of energy. Whenever someone commits an evil act, the flow of the energy of Heaven and Earth is cut off, and the person can no longer recognize his or her destiny ( ming ), that is, the moral duty in life, and will accordingly lead a life akin to that of beasts. Heaven and Earth hate this state of affairs and, as a result, cause the person to fall ill (96.425). Also, when the energy in the body is no longer in harmony, its spirit and essence will take off. The reason for this is that spirit and essence love to be in a pure place, and when the body becomes defiled, they dislike it so much that they leave (18.27). The reason, in turn, why the body is defiled is that the person has committed a sin. This shows clearly that in this early thinking the concepts of sin and defilement were intimately connected.
To make the spirit return to the body, which will also effect a cure for the illness, the defiled body must be purified. To this end, Daoist followers practiced zhaijie as well as sitting in an “incense chamber”
and meditating on the images of the gods who resided in the body’s inner organs. Zhaijie at this time indicated formal measures of purification that involved fasting and living only on pure energy, keeping one’s eyes averted from all evil and nastiness, practicing bodily refine-ments, and abstaining from sexual activities and passions (42.90). Meditation ( jingsi ) was especially emphasized as a remedial method in the Taiping jing and had to do with the belief that the good spirits would come into the body if and when they were visualized within—as would the bad. The “incense chamber” ( xiangshi) indicates the oratory, or jingshi (73.306, 110.534, 35.46; see Yoshikawa 1998). Prepared by zhaijie and meditation and placing themselves in the incense chamber, Daoists would then undergo formal confessions. The act of confession, then, was a key measure in the purification process, as it was thought to aid the expulsion of the defilement of sin that had infiltrated the body.
The actual confession ritual, moreover, consisted of the verbal formulation of one’s sins and offered an opportunity to identify the ones responsible. A pertinent example is not found in the Taiping jing itself but in the Jinshu (History of the Jin Dynasty): Wang Xianzhi once fell ill, and his family decided to have a ritual of petitioning on his behalf. The invited Daoist master had him confess his sins and to this end asked him a number of relevant questions. He answered: “There is nothing sinful I can think of in particular, except
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maybe the fact that I divorced my wife, Chi Daomao.” This lady was the daughter of Chi Tan. Wang Xianzhi died soon thereafter. (80.2106; see also Bokenkamp 1997, 253 n 20)
So Wang’s illness and death in this account were related to his sin of divorcing his wife, Chi Tan’s daughter. Since he was a member of the southern aristocracy several hundred years after the Way of Great Peace, it is hard to tell whether his experience reflects earlier practices. On the other hand, it is one of the few incidents described in the texts. Let us, therefore, take a closer look. The Daoist master begins to prepare the ceremony by asking the sick person to examine his or her behavior from the early stages of life to the time of the illness. Once a foundation is established in the form of a list of the patient’s good and bad deeds, it is possible to judge which one or ones might have been the immediate cause for the illness at hand. To do a proper evaluation, this implies, the sick person should be conscious of a number of rules and precepts, the breaking of which might constitute a sin; he or she would need a measurement against which to assess the deeds.
Should the sick person be unable to think of any sins or bad deeds, the master might prompt him or her by listing the rules and precepts.
The imagination-based reflection of one’s former deeds to find out one’s sins and the pointing-out of possible misdeeds by others in this system aid the patient in the recognition of certain sins as the possible cause of the condition. This, in turn, serves to develop a certain level of interior moral self-awareness, which finds different forms of expression. As the Taiping jing says:
People today behave in a stupid and superficial way, then get sick and die, never once taking proper refuge in Heaven. If only they confessed their sins before their entire family, beat their breasts, and kowtowed deeply to Heaven, seeking help and begging for mercy, Heaven would certainly—at least after a few days—grant them forgivenness. (114.621) The activity of confession and breast-beating, it seems, went on for several days, allowing the expression of the patient’s self. Not taking refuge in Heaven alone, according to this, however, did not make a person a sinner. Rather, the formal status of sinner came only with the act of confession and the official begging of Heaven’s mercy. As penitents formally confessed their sins ( shouguo) and beat their breasts ( zibo), they would repeatedly throw themselves to the ground and knock their heads ( koutou), repenting their sins and accusing themselves of various misdeeds (114.591). The Taiping jing also uses the ex-
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pression zize, or “self-blame,” indicating that people would “meditate on their sins and think of the burden thus accumulated” (107.555).
The formal confession of sins, therefore, also included the opportunity for self-blame, which in turn was a way of developing shame within the person for the sins committed. The ceremony then offered a chance to show this inner shame to the entire community and thus be exonerated (154.719).6 The effect was the same as that described in Zhang Daoling’s biography cited earlier, that is, penitents would recognize their sins, feel ashamed of them, and then vow “to the gods that they would sin no more, on penalty of death.”
In addition, it seems that, at least in the middle ages, penitents would also undergo harsh self-punishments, or aggressions against themselves ( zinue). Why would they do that? The Taiping jing does not give a coherent answer to this question, but it does speak about aggression and hurt exerted toward others and visited upon sinners by Heaven:
Even if Heaven has indicated that it will kill the sinners, they yet pray for long life and pu
t their faith in Heaven, as if nothing was wrong. Even if Heaven has begun to punish them, they yet cry out to Heaven and Earth and loudly wish for forgiveness. This is because they do not understand the importance of their own sins.
Then Heaven tests them, leads them off, and even throws them into a far-off, deserted wilderness, so that they may come to know themselves.
If you want to know what this kind of judgment feels like, just think of the examination of a criminal by an enlightened ruler. If he confesses his crimes and accepts the blame for them, the ruler will not have him killed. It is just the same with Heaven.
Depending on the greatness of the misdeeds, the culprit will be given a prison sentence —a harsh one for major sins, a light one for lesser ones. This way he can expiate his crime. And if he has come to know himself properly, then even should he have to die, he will not feel ha-tred and not cry out against the judgment. (117.663)
According to this, the suffering inflicted upon sinners matches the weight and seriousness of their sins. Accordingly, if sinners understand the causes and reasons for their sufferings and recognize the impact of their own behavior, then they achieve a certain level of self-awareness and self-consciousness. When undergoing a formal rite of penitence, it is, therefore, adequate that the sinners subject themselves to punishments matching their trespasses. The self-punishing acts during such a rite are, therefore, undertaken in anticipation of the punishments Heaven would eventually mete out, sinners putting them on themselves
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to avoid later inflictions. The formal rite of confession, in turn, becomes part of the self-punishment undergone in fear of Heaven.
Self-Blame and Confession
If formal confession is part of self-punishment, how then are the sins formulated, and what exactly is the effect of this action? There are no pertinent examples in the Taiping jing, but the expression “self-blame”
occurs variously in sources of the Later Han period. One case is the exposure of King Tang of the Shang in a rainmaking ceremony after the country had suffered from a prolonged drought. The story first appears in pre-Han literature (see Zheng 1957), where it is mentioned twice, in the Lüshi chunqiu (Spring and Autumn Annals of Mr. Lü) and in the Xunzi (Works of Master Xun). The first version runs: Tang himself entered the mulberry forest to pray. He said: “If I, the ruler, have sinned, then let the people not be blamed; but if the people have sinned, then let me, the ruler, take the blame! Let not the highest god and otherworldly spirits harm the destiny of the people for the personal incompetence of my single person!”
Having said this, he cut off his hair and had his hands tied, making himself into a sacrificial victim. Thus he prayed to the highest god. The people greatly rejoiced at his actions, and a great rain fell. ( Lüshi chunqiu CH.479; see Wilhelm 1971, 106–107; Schafer 1951) Then again, the Xunzi has:
On the occasion of the drought, Tang prayed: “Is my government not properly regulated? Does it cause the people grief? Why has the rain not come for so long a time? Are the palaces and chambers too glori-ous? Are the women of the harem too numerous? Why has the rain not come for so long a time? Are reed mats and sackcloth being offered in bribe? Do slanderers flourish? Why has the rain not come for so long a time? ( Xunzi 24.504; Knobloch 1994, 323–324)
The king’s prayer in the first version begins with the assumption that the continued drought is to be blamed on a specific sin. If the sin is the emperor’s, then he is a major sinner who deserves to die. If it is the people’s, then the emperor will take it upon himself. In either case, he shoulders the responsibility for the well-being of the realm and is considered a sinner. As he recognizes himself as such, he undergoes the appropriate punishment of exposure and offers himself as a sacrifice. Heaven accepts this and promptly sends down rain. The second version, too, begins with the assumption that sin causes the
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drought. It acknowledges the possibility that the sin is the emperor’s by mentioning his self-examination, but ultimately in this reading he does not commit any wrong. As a result, the emperor is not a sinner, and the drought is an unwarranted oppression on the side of Heaven.
As the emperor exposes himself, Heaven recognizes its wrong and sends down rain.
Looked at from the perspective of self-blame, the two versions are significantly different. In the first, the emperor sees himself as a sinner and becomes an appropriate sacrificial victim, thus accepting blame upon himself. In the second, he is free from sin and, therefore, does not take any blame.
The story developed further under the Han and appears in Wang Chong’s Lunheng (Balanced Discussions):
According to legend, after seven years of drought King Tang exposed himself in prayer in the mulberry forest, blaming himself for six faults.
Then Heaven sent down rain. The king said: . . . [as in Lüshi chunqiu].
[This is like] one person sitting on a dais and another kowtowing to him below, begging him for something. As the one on top hears the lower person’s words, he feels compassion and concedes to the request.
However, if the top man could not hear the lesser one’s words, then even if the latter implored him most movingly, he would not get anything. Now, the distance between Heaven and humanity is not only that between above and below a dais. How then could Heaven, however much King Tang blames himself, hear his pleas and send rain in response? ( Lunheng 16.245; see Forke 1972)
Wang Chong, although overall critical of the basic idea that Heaven can hear anything, in his retelling of the story mixes the perspective of the two pre-Han versions and interprets the king’s list of sins as an indication of self-blame. He does so because he places the incident in the wider cultural context of self-examinations and formal confessions, already practiced in his time.
As his words also confirm, confession begins by examining the sins committed, then moves on to an organized list of them. As the sins are made public, shame is felt and blame is formally accepted by the self—marking self-blame as an essential part of confession and, therefore, also of the development of a critical, moral self-awareness.7
Heaven and Human Consciousness
Confessions and acts of self-blame are, therefore, self-inflicted punishments that anticipate the suffering Heaven is expected to mete out
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in recompense for the sins committed. Their purpose is to get Heaven to grant forgiveness for those sins—an idea common to both the Daoist text and the King Tang story.
To be more specific, a Taiping jing passage cited earlier states that confession, beating the breasts, kowtowing, and begging for mercy certainly would cause Heaven to forgive the penitent’s sins (114.621). This mercy is the compassion and pity felt by Heaven on behalf of the sinner. Similarly, in the story of King Tang, Heaven is moved by the suffering to which the ruler subjects himself, communicating his sincere intention to the powers above. Both the Taiping jing and the story of King Tang, therefore, hold that if one acknowledges oneself as a sinful person and communicates one’s sincere intention to Heaven, the latter will certainly grant forgiveness. However, how is Heaven thought to recognize and understand this human effort at sincerity and self-blame?
Heaven and humanity might, as in the illustration used by Wang Chong, be seen as two interacting agents, of equal sensory power but different position in the scale of things, so that the human being needs only to voice his or her faults loudly in order to be understood and recognized. In this model, Heaven is a personified celestial power, which has an auditory sense to hear human pleas and recognize human sincerity. Equally anthropomorphic is Heaven’s reaction of pity and compassion, the basis for the forgiveness offered to the sinner.
While this model may be at the root of the King Tang story, it is not dominant in the Taiping jing. Here, Heaven and Earth, on the one hand, and humanity, on the other, are linked primarily through their common bond of qi-energy. A
s consciousness arises in the human being, so his or her qi is activated; this, in turn, has the ability to move and respond to Heaven and Earth. Utmost sincerity ( zhicheng ), then, is the state within human beings that most closely matches the virtue of Heaven and Earth as they create and nurture the myriad beings.
Human beings receive life from their father and mother only because Heaven and Earth, in their sincere virtue, cause this to happen. As a result, Heaven and Earth expect human beings to turn toward the good and develop a similar sincerity in their actions. Ideally, therefore, a human being should always first reflect on the will and tendencies of Heaven and Earth before doing anything.
Within human beings, moreover, the heart/mind is the highest among the five inner organs, the seat of spirit and sagacity, and the residence of pure yang qi within the body. In the system of the five
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phases, it is associated with fire, a fire that burns within people to match the glory and brightness of Heaven. Similarly, the sun, the concentrated yang energy of the sky, is the ruler of fire and the most honored among all celestial entities. It, too, is a source of great light and bright radiance. In people, similarly, a mind of utmost sincerity burns with warm fire and shines forth with great brightness, matching the power of the sun. The spirit of the heart/mind, moreover, rises up to communicate the mind’s sagacity to the sun, which, in turn, transmits this pure intention to Heaven. This is the pathway by which utmost sincerity in humans can move the spirit powers of the universe and spread purity all around, including also throughout the body ( Taiping jing 96.426).
The way human consciousness impacts Earth is understood along similar lines. Most purely, when people are in a state of utmost sincerity, they are free from thoughts and radiate pure yang energy. Now, if they have thoughts while in deep sincerity, the heart/mind feels burdened and in pain, both heart and stomach are upset, and the person cannot eat or drink. The force that causes the mind to be filled with thoughts and enter this painful state is the intention ( yi). The nature of the intention is benevolence, and among inner organs it is associated with the liver. The liver being further connected with the eyes, when humans are in a state of sincerity with thoughts, they often shed tears.