IN Description
Purposes, Means and Convictions
in Daoism
A Berlin Symposium
Edited by
Florian C. Reiter
2007
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Foreword VII
I. Historical and Ritual Traditions I
ANoRpes FnLorrelr-pR
General Reflections on Religious Purposes, Means, and Convictions. ................ 3
Tpnny Kr-eenaRN
Daoism in the Third Centurv. 1l
JoHN Lecpnwpy
The Old Lord's Scripture for the Chanting of the Commandments. 29
Lru Yr
Myth and History. The Contribution of Six Dynasties Daoism to the
Formation of the Image of the Heavenly Master Zhang Daoling. 57
Grr Rez
Imperial Efficacy: Debates on Imperial Ritual in Early Medieval China
and the Emergence of Daoist Ritual Schemata 83
II. Varieties of Relisious Activities and Functions......... 111
Tnvroruy BenRprr
Daoism in Action? The Princess-Nuns of the High Tang Period. 113
SrepHsN R. BoTpNKAMP
What Daoist Body?...... 131
Lr GeNc
The Subtlety of Body Divinities and their Fortification. A Discussion of the
Basis for Going beyond Life and Death in the Daoist Philosophy of Life. 151
Fr-oRrex C. Rsnpn
The Management of Nature: Convictions and Means in Daoist Thunder
Magic (Daojiao leifa). 183
I VI CoNrnNrs
Lr Yuaxcuo
The Development of Daoist Thunder Magic and its Background in the
Southern Song Period. 201
Vor-r
Chinese Literati and Daoist Sacred Space. A Nineteenth Century Inscription
in Pujiang County (Sichuan Province) .. 221
WaNc ZoNcvu
The Relationship between Quanzhen Daoism and Local Cults. 231
Abbreviations......... 251
Index 253
List of Contributors........... 257 What Daoist Bodv?
Srp,psEN R. BoTpNKAMP
"Little girls eat eggs quite as much as serpents do, you lcnow," said Alice. "I
don't believe it," said the Pigeon, "bLtt f they do, why then they're a kind of
serpent that's all I can say!"
Lewis Carroll, Alice's Adventures in Wonderland
When one opens a text on the history of Greek philosophy, one learns of Homeric
notions of the self and the make-up of the human body, then of those of the pre-
Socratics, of the sources of Aristotle's "three souls," and the like. The mystery
religions of early Greece are studied alongside its philosophy. Things are very
different when one comes to read about early Chinese philosophy. Benjamin
Schwartz' The World of Thought in Ancient China, to take but one notable example
from the survey genre, does not contain the words "self' or "soul" or "body" (nor
the Chinese words for these concepts) in its glossary at all.r
Meanwhile, in modern studies of Daoism, bbdies are everywhere. Like so many
forensic pathologists, scholars of Daoism lay open to our view organs, tissue,
humors, and fluids; souls, spirits, and essences; not to mention enticing descriptions
of bodies that can fly, divide, transform, or disappear. In this regard, a novice reader
in the history of Chinese thought could not be blamed for coming away from the
experience convinced that there was a radical disjuncture between early Chinese
thought and later religious expression. At least insofar as treatments of the body are
concerned, they seem to arise from entirely different cultures.
It would be disingenuous of me to suggest that modern scholars are entirely to
blame for this state of affairs. Daoist texts, along with the nearly cognate genre of
medical texts, provide somatic detail; other sorts of texts do not reveal so much. But
it is not unfair to say that this state of affairs suits us. When speaking of unfamiliar
religions, we want to track down foreign souls; when we try to comprehend
unfamiliar philosophies or literatures, it is convenient to presuppose familiar
mind/body constructions.
I The same is true of A. C. Graham's Disputers of the Tao: Philosophical Argument in Ancient
China, (La Salle: Open Court, 1989). But similar examples are legion. As late as 1993, Roger
Ames sets out to pen a "preliminary investigation of the classical Chinese conception of body"
in an "attempt to reinstate the notion of body in our understanding of the early Chinese
philosophical literature as a corrective to what I perceive to be an inappropriate 'psychologization' of the materials." (See Roger Ames, "The Meaning of Body in Classical
Chinese Philosophy," in Self as body in Asian theory and practice Thomas P. Kasulis, ed. (Albany: State University of New York Press,1993). t32 SrrpupN R. BorpNr,qlvrp
Thus, from non-Daoist texts, we have become familiar with the Chinese xin ,b,
"heart" or "mind," seat of thought and emotion. We know that it is located in the
chest, rather than the head. From scattered references, largely mortuary in subject
matter, we also know of two sorts of entities we often translate "soul," the hun ffi
(cloudsoul, ethereal soul) and the po frft (whitesoul, spermatic soul) which separate
at death, the former tending to fly up and wander and the latter to sink back into the
earth.' But these later two terms occur rarely and are discussed even more
infrequently in pre-Daoist literature.' It is not unfair to say, then, that what we know
about the body in early Chinese philosophical literature is that it "has heart/mind."
The terms used to describe somatic architecture in Daoist texts, by contrast, are
too numerous to conveniently catalogue here. Clearly, description of the body is
important to the Daoist religion and fully deserving of the many studies that have
been devoted to it.
We thus arrive at an impasse. In that the usual analytic procedure when
comparing two systems of thought is to contrast their vocabularies, terminological
richness and lavish attention at the outset seems incommensurable with
terminological poverty and inattention. More dangerously, because what early
Chinese wrote about the body, as about other topics, is taken unproblematically as
indicative of what they "believed" about the body, Daoist somatology comes to seem
almost an alien intrusion on the Chinese scene." Since pre-Han thinkers reportedly
believed in a suspiciously Cartesian (but unexamined) body and Daoists believed
their bodies to be not only worth the ink, but site of numerous souls, spirits, and
powers, there can be no logical continuity.s
In this essay, I want to attempt to see beyond the perplexities apparent at the
terminological and evidential levels to examine the metaphorical structures both
Chinese Daoists and non-Daoists employ when they talk about the body. In order to
For a useful survey of non-Daoist literature on the two sorts of soul, see Mu-chou Poo, ln Search of Personal Welfare: A View of Ancient Chinese Religion, (Albany: State University of New York Press, 1998), pp.62-66.
For a survey of occurrences, see K. E. Brashier, "Han Thanatology and the Division of 'Souls'." Early China 2l(1996): 125-158. Brashier derives from the contradictions in literary references to the hun and po the conclusion that early Chinese in fact did not believe in two sorts of soul. As he puts it "The texts previously used to justifii this position. . . seem to indicate that (hunpo) dualism belongs to the realm of scholasticism rather then general beliefs on death" (p. ls8).
See Donald S. Lopez, Jr. "Belief," in Mark C. Taylor, ed., Critical Terms for Religious Studies, (Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 1998), pp.2l-35, for a critique of the "ideology of belief. . . that religion is above all an interior state of assent to certain truths." Assumptions are drawn on the basis of such observations. The usual ones are 1) that Daoism represents popular beliefs finally emerging into view; 2) that Daoism is a native reaction to imported Indian religious views; or 3) that Daoism is a perversion of philosophical ideas mixed with popular and/or foreign beliefs. Wuar Deorsr Booy? r33
begin this project, I will employ some of the insights of George Lakoff and Mark
Johnson concerning the way metaphors fundamentally structure thought processes.u
Among possible lines of enquiry, I will here pursue the following three: First, I
would like to argue that the "multi-spirit body," as I shall call it, is but one of the
metaphors that Daoists employ in talking about the self.7 I will provide evidence that
Daoist writers also had recourse to a more universal metaphor for speaking of the
self, one that Lakoff and Johnson describe as the "subject-self' metaphor, in which
"a person is divided into a Subject and one or more Selves." This way of speaking
about the self occurs in early Chinese texts and explicitly coexists with the
multispirit body metaphor.
Second, I will investigate what early Chinese were trying to accomplish when
they spoke of the body as housing multiple spirits. Under what circumstances was
this particular metaphor employed in place of other, equally available ways of
describing the selflo The multi-spirit body, I will argue, proves a fragmented or
potentially fragmented body, a threatened body or one that has, in glorious fashion,
overcome this threat. In short, I will claim that this way of speaking of the self
occurs, in both Daoist and non-Daoist texts, when psycho-physical wholeness is
endangered, or, conversely, when texts celebrate the restoration or maintenance of
that wholeness. Finally, I want to emphasize that the fragmented, multi-spirit body is
not confined to Daoism, that it pre-dates the development of Daoism as a religion. I
will present evidence that the assumed "religiosity" of such a way of talking about
the body has led modern scholars to adopt interpretive strategies to hide it from
view.
My goals in this essay are modest ones. I am not aiming for a paradigm shift, but
simply for a reconsideration of certain operating assumptions. In place of the
assumption that Chinese views of the body are transparent "belief systemsrl I want
to foreground several of the various linguistic repertoires available to early Chinese
See particularly George Lakoff and Mark Johnson, Metaphors We Live By, (Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 1980) and Philosophy in the Flesh: The Embodied Mind and its Challenge to Western Thought, Q{ew York: Basic Books, 1999). While I will employ some of their insights and terminology, I will not here engage the far-ranging conclusions they draw, especially in the latter book. This is primarily because I am skeptical that conclusions on human thought processes can be drawn from texts, especially classical Chinese texts that do not seem to represent the spoken language of the authors of those texts. Nonetheless, I find their approach to the functions of metaphor in spoken and written language insightful and useful. It is, to use Lakoff 's terminology, an idealized cognitive model, and perhaps the central one for Daoism, but only one of several that were productive of Daoist practice. On Lakoff s "ICM" see his LTomen, Fire, and Dangerous Things: What Categorie,s Reveal About the Mind, (Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 1987), pp.67-74. Several recent studies have emphasized the ways in which cultures are never simple or unitary. Every culture offers a range of possibilities and actors tend to draw promiscuously on this "toolkit" of sometimes conflicting repertoires in justifying and describing their actions. See Ann Swidler, Talk of Love: How Culture Matters (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1999), especially pp. 24-40 and Robert Ford Campany, "The Meanings of Cuisines of Transcendence in Late Classical and Early Medieval China" T'oung PaoXCI (2005), 1-57. 134 SrppspN R. BotcnNraup
in speaking of the self. Where Daoism is assumed "other," I want to assume
continuity with the world of thought within which the religion developed. In sum, I
want to show that, through representing their control over the fragmented body as an
anodyne to physical, cultural, and spiritual dissolution, Daoist texts provide us with
a clear elaboration of one archaic metaphor for speaking about the body.
I want to begin with two illustrations, drawn from Daoist scriptures, of what has
been described as the distinctive Daoist view of the bodv. The first is drawn from the
Shangqing scriptures of Yang Xi (330-386?).
The body of a person contains the spirits of the Palaces of the Three Primes.
Within the Gate of Destiny are the Grand Sovereign of the Mystic Pass and
the spirits of the three cloudsouls.' Altogether, then, there are seven spirits
within the body who desire that the person live a long life. These are the
greatly propitious sovereigns of kindness and benevolence. The seven
whitesouls also are born within the same body, but they are thieves who
attack the body. This is why they must be controlled. If Daoists know only
the methods of seeking transcendence and do not know the way to control
their whitesouls, they can but labor in vain.
As for the placement of the Palaces of the Three Primes: The Palace of the
Upper Prime is in the brain. Its spirit is the Ruddy Infant, with the byname
"Primal Priority" and the alternate name "Thearch's Chamberlain." The
Palace of the Central Prime resides in the Scarlet Chamber, that is, the heart.
Its spirit is "Perfected One," with the byname "Thane Cinnabar" and the
alternate name "shining Durability." The Lower Prime is the Palace of the
Cinnabar Field, three inches below the navel. Its spirit is "Newborn," with the
byname "Primal Yang" and the alternate name "Valley Mystery."l0
These are the spirits of the triple unity. Whenever you wish to secure your
cloudsouls and control your whitesouls, you should always first secretly call
the names of these spirits.' '
My second example demonstrates the centrality of these Daoist ideas about the
body in another way. Drawn from the early fifth century Lingbao scriptures, it
represents a Daoist rewriting of some Buddhist concepts. As we shall see, the multi-
spirit body provides the structural foundation over which Buddhist ideas are draped.
The section translated below comes from descriptions of the first of the "six
penetrating wisdoms" n €ff.H that are associated with vision:
On the Gate of Destiny and the Mystic Pass, as well as the gods that inhabit them, see Robinet,
Medi t at ion t a oi's t e, (Paris : Dervy-livre s, | 97 9), pp. 120-29 .
The names and bynames of the spirits of the Three Primes derive from distinct textual
traditions. See Robinet, La rdvdlation du Shangqing, (Paris: Publications de I'Ecole Frangaise
d'Extr€me-Orient, # 137) 2: 30-32 and 80-82.
Translation from Stephen R. Bokenkamp, Early Daoist Scriptures, (Berkeley: University of
California Press, 1997), pp. 326-27.
l0
1l WHar Daorsr Bopv?
The Celestial Worthy said: Heaven is associated with penetrating vision,
which is to say, celestial eyes enable great and penetrating wisdom, limitless
above and below, in the four directions and to the eight reaches of space.
There is nothing they cannot illumine. Though we name it a single
penetrating wisdom, it encompasses the five colors equally. Since this
heavenly penetration is so of itself, there is no diminution. If a person models
heaven, the scarlet lads f:pupils] within his eyes will also have beams of the
five colors. But if a person does not keep the precepts, the qi of his six senses
will not communicate and his openings will not open in wisdom. When such
a person widely surveys the five colors, the lads in his eyes will fly out wildly
and the light will be occluded. This will cause blindness.r2
Buddhists, perhaps in order to meet expectations they encountered in the
crowded Indian religious landscape, found it necessary to forward a concept that
seems at odds with the goals of the religion, contending that their practices too
resulted in quite this-worldly "spiritual powers" (skt. abhijfio).A standard list
categorrzes feats such as the ability to be everywhere at once into six powers, five of
which masters outside the religion might also boast and one obtainable only by
Buddhists well along the path to enlightenment. In adopting these ideas, Daoists, of
course, claimed all six.l3
Given the remarkable abilities with which Daoists credited their sages, one might
expect a lively exposition of the ways in which the spiritual powers of Daoists
exceed those of the bodhisattvas.ra Instantaneous flight from one spot to another, for
instance, is an art much developed in Daoist scripture, so we might expect them to
fly rings around circumambulatory Buddhist monks. This is not, in fact, what we
find. Instead, this Lingbao acount of the "six spiritual powers" proceeds by
categortzation, organizing its list of powers by the traditional "six sense organs," and
the "six directions" i€ (expressed here as "heaven, earth, and the four cardinal
directions"), both of which are further aligned with a set of six precepts.
Beyond this systematization of what must have appeared as a somewhat chaotic
Buddhist list, our attention is drawn to the fact that the Daoist account is actually
less fantastic than the Buddhist sources on which it drew. While the Bodhisattva
possessed of "heaven's eyes"r5 for instance, might observe the past and future lives
HY 177, Taishang dongzhen zhihui shangpin dajie XLiEFtrH-tffiifil, 10b1-6. The Buddhist list, drawn from the Avatamsaka-siltra, includes, simply expressed: 1) supematural vision, 2) supernatural hearing, 3) the ability to know the hearts of others, 4) the ability to know the past lives of others, 5) the ability to travel anywhere at will, and 6) knowledge of the exhaustion of kle6a or "defilement." The Daoist list, by contrast, coincides only with the first two, the remainder being, again simply expressed: 3) supernatural sense of smell, 4) supernatural taste, 5) supernatural heart/mind, and 6) supematural sense of touch and ability.For a lively catalogue of such Daoist feats, see Isabelle Robinet, "Metamorphosis and Deliverance from the Corpse in Daoism," History of Religions 19.l(1979),pp. 57-70. I have purposefully translated not the Sanskrit term divyacaksus "spirit vision," but the Chinese
135
12
l3
T4
l5 t36 SrBpuPN R. BorBurauP
of any person with whom he comes into contact, the Daoist is promised only a vague
..penetrating vision into the ten directions of space."16 More surprisingly, instead of
repeating the attractive promises found in any number of Daoist scriptures or indeed
those of its Buddhist model, the Lingbao text expends ink discussing nurturance of
the specific spirit in charge of the elyes (the Scarlet Lad)' since the failure of this
spirit results in poor vision or blindness. There are, in fact, bodily spirits invoked in
each of the examples given. To take another example, for the heart/mind' which is
not in the Buddhist abhijfia list at all, our Lingbao text states:
When wisdom does not penetrate, the spirit of the heart shakes about wildly,
giving rise to emotional attachments and desires' These fattachments and
desires] cause a person to lose their way, destroying fthe heart] spirit and
shortening life."
This reformulation of Buddhist abhiifi o descriptions reveals something
fundamental about Daoist claims to knowledge of the body. Daoists assert that they
can identifz, name, and thus control, not only trre hidden triggers that set bodily
forces in motion but, more importantly, the forces that destroy physical equilibrium'
This control arises out of their intimate knowledge of, and control over, the hidden
"spirits" that inhabit the bodY.
Descriptions of the body such as those recounted above are well-explored terrain
in Daoist studies, so well explored, in fact, that we confidently label them examples
of ,,theDaoist UoO""ts;ut is the body thus described the only one to which Daoists
laid claim? And is it exclusively Daoist?
ffiouldhavesignifiedtothoseunschooledinSanskrittechnica1vocabulary'In early medieval ctti".t.."ti"'vlthis latter group,includtd 11l *11*^,Y^i*?j",:t1""'.:T
population, but a g""OfV nu*t", of learned Chinese monks as well' That is to say'
commentaries written in ihina more often deal with the nuances of a Chinese translation term
than those of the Sanskrit term underlying it. Modern scholars, on the other hand' still too often
tend to regard chinese as a transparency revealing unproblematically the "underlying Sanskrit."
on some of the implications of ihis practice, r"" go,,.htr (19912) and' for an interesting case'
Bokenkamp ,,chinese Metaphor, Again: Reading - and Understanding - Imagery in the
Chinese poetic Tradition,', Journal of the Americin oriental Society, 109'2 (1989), pp' 211-
221.
16 HY t77,l0bl-4
17 HY 177,12b7-9.
18 And it has been so labeled. See Kristofer Schipper, The Taoist Body' Karen c' Duval' tr'
(Berkeley: University of california Press, 1993iand the even more detailed Taoist Ritual in
chinese society and History, (New York: Macmillan Publishing company, 1987) by John
LagerweY. Wser Daorsr Boov?
The Subject/Self Body
Since reason is shaped by the body, it is not radically free, because the possible human conceptual systems and the possible .forms of reason are limited.le
Lakoff and Johnson
In their recent book, Philosophy in the Flesh, George Lakoff and Mark Johnson describe in detail the fundamental metaphors we use to describe our inner lives. According to Lakoff and Johnson, we conceptualize ourselves as bifurcated into a Subject "locus of consciousness, subjective experience, reason, will, and our 'essence,' everything that makes us who we uniquely are" and the Self or Selves, "everything else about us, our bodies, our social roles, our histories, and so on."26 They describe five instances of this metaphor. The four based on experience - manipulating objects, location in space, social relationship, and empathic projection
- seem to me common to all languages with first-person pronouns and reflexive grammatical structures.'' The fifth, which they call ihe "Foik Theory of Essences,, (capitalization theirs) seems more linguistically problematical, though the examples they use to illustrate it are mundane. According to this ..folk theory,',
Eeach person is seen as having an Essence that is part of the Subject. The person may have more than one Self, but only one of those Selves is compatible with that Essence. This is called the "real" or "true" Self.22
Thus expressions like "I (self 2) feel fully myself (self 1) today" indicate that we hold a notion of a real self, our essential self, that should be compatible with our essence (Subject), evidenced in the metaphorical equivalence of self one with self two. Denial of this assertion ("I'm not myself today" - the example they actually provide) also entails identification of a Subject with which self 1 is associated and from which self 2 deviates. Apparently, Lakoff and Johnson derive this category to cover ontological statements that atrfirst do not specifically seem to be embodied in everyday experience. But, as is shown by some of the examples they forward in this category - "She went to India to look for her true self," or "He retreats into himself'
- the folk theory of essence is compatible with the other four instances they adduce.
19 Philosophy in the Flesh, p.5. 20 Philosophy in the Flesh, p.268. 21 Philosophy in the Flesh, pp. 269-28L For those unacquainted with the work of Lakoff and Johnson' typical examples of these four types of metaphor will help to clarify their claims: l) Subject motivation of self as manipulating an object: "You are pmhing yourself too hard.,' 2j Relation of subject to self in space as a container: "I'm just beside myselfioday." 3) Relation of subject to self as a social relationship: "I need to be kinder to myself.', 4; Th" subject,s empathic projection of self onto another: "Given what I've done, if i *.." you, I'd hate me too." 22 Philosophy in the Flesh, p.269.
t37 138 SrBpupN R. BorpNr,A.N{P
"She went to India to look for her true self is a type of spatial emplacement
metaphor and "He retreats into himself is an example of the "body as container"
metaphor. What is important here is the reahzatron that we regularly locate our true,
essential self in the "subject" and posit further "selves," depending on how we feel,
whether we want to dissemble, etc. In normal, healthy conditions, we locate our
essential self unambiguously in the controlling Subject. In times of stress or illness,
we might posit one or more Selves - "One side of me tells me to go, another to
stay." - but the Subject, the essential self, the "me" of this example, remains that
aspect of our imagined self with which we most closely identifi'' That is to say' the
"Folk Theory of Essences" applies in most cases when we talk about self.
Later in the work, Lakoff and Johnson discuss briefly the implications of their
findings for the truth claims of religious views of the soul, arguing that the
metaphorical ways we have of speaking about the Subject lead naturally to such
conceptions. Interestingly, they note that
One might imagine a spiritual tradition in which. . . a Soul is fundamentally
embodied - shaped in important ways by the body, located forever as part of
the body, and dependent for its ongoing existence on the body. The results
about the mind discussed throughout this book in no way rule out the
existence of that kind of Soul, an embodied Soul.23
Given the relentless corporality of Chinese views of soul and the afterlife,
Daoism might seem the perfect candidate for such a religion. I will argue, however,
that it is not. I want to claim instead that the early Chinese "multi-spirit" metaphors
function precisely in the ways Lakoff and Johnson describe.
Early Chinese writers regularly employ the subject/self metaphor in the four
everyday senses Lakoff and Johnson delineate. The Chinese language further leads
Daoist writers to speak of the self in terms that look very much like the Folk Theory
of Essences, despite their reference to the multiplicity of spirits that make up the
body. Three examples are presented below.
The following is from the Lingbao scriptures and comes from a passage
describing Daoist notions of rebirth:
When one is resolute in one's practice and joins with the Dao, the body and
the spirit are unified. When these are unified, this is the true fperfected] body.
This return to the father and mother [:the Dao] who originally gave birth to
one is to complete the Dao. Within the Dao there will be no further trouble
then and one will not die. lf one is obliterated and crosses over, the spirit will
depart and the body will not be destroyed. Then the entire body will ftogether
with the spirit] return to its root, never departing from it. But, when one
commits the myriad transgressions and dies, this is called 'death.' Death is
obliteration and destruction. The self then returns to a father and mother and
23 Philosophy in the Flesh, P. 563. Wunr Daorsr Booy? 139
entrusts itself to the womb. So long as the karma of these transgressions is
not exhausted, one will never return to the true father and mother. flnstead] the spirit will join the ranks of those who labor in the earth, the body will
become dust and ashes. . .24
In translating, I have rendered "spirit or spirits" lF in the singular, as if I had not
been informed that Lingbao Daoists most frequently describe the body as composed
of multiple spirits. But translating the term in the plural would make little difference.
We see at death a body returning to dust and "spirit" or "spirits," locus of the "true
self' (described above in the text as the single "self' (fd) proceeding either into the
underworld or rejoining the body, like the Christian soul its original body at the final
trump. The picture is thus to us a familiar one. Death might be dissolution, but the
essential "self," or Subject in Lakoff and Johnson's terms, is lodged in some
spiritual entity that might with justification be called a single o'soul." This is an
iteration of the "folk theory of essences."
Another example might be found in a meditation procedure for securing the
spirits of the body to promote healthy sight and hearing that is found in the Zhen'gao
fDeclarations of the Perfected]. The incantation accompanying this method
commands the various spirits of the body, including the three cloudsouls, seven
whitesouls, the gods of the eyes, the ears, and of the five viscera, to purify and
perfect themselves. Then, thp incantation states "all are to join with me +i. If
anything dares to block my #i ears and eyes, the Most High will pulverize them with
the Flowing Bell."2t Here, despite the recitation of bodily spirits, even some that we
regularly translate as types of "soul," the essential self remains in control.
Another highly interesting example comes from a non-Daoist poem by Ruan Yu
(d. 2I2) in which the poet imagines himself as a corpse in his grave. Emerging, he
finds that his family has departed. While other spirits are feasted, he is destined to be
a hungry ghost. The last three couplets of the poem read:
My body fl gone,my qi energies x-:,1 bound,
My essences and cloudsoul ftrfi have no way to return.
When fine foods are spread, I am not served;
Sweet liquors fill only banquet flagons and cups.
I come forth from my funeral vault to gaze on my old home-
But see only mugwort and broom.26
HY 456, Taishang dongxuan lingbao sanyuan pinjie gongde qingzhong jtrg lt |_ilE{,ffiH= ;r,FlffithIE+SEf;S, 34a-b. For a slightly different translation and discussion of this passage, which I have excerpted here, see my forthcoming Ancestors and Anxiety: Daoism and the Birth of Rebirth in China. HY 1010, Zhen'gao F;9,9.8b2. Ding Fubao TIF{R, Quan Han, Sanguo Jin Nanbeichao shi AiE=EFffiJhSfi;+, ,.euan
Sanguo shi," 3: 267. The first person pronouns are not in the text, but are mandated by the Chinese poetic convention.
2526 140 SrnPuBNR. BoreNreuP
Ruan Yu catalogues several parts of the "mu1ti-spirit" body (qi, essence, cloudsoul),
but treats them as "Selves," locating his essential self as "Subject."
I would suggest that, given what we now understand of Daoism, familiarity
causes us to pass in silence over such passages in our texts. Since scholars of
Daoism want to establish the distinctiveness of the religion, we focus instead on
what seems to us strange, the body depicted as housing multiple spirits. In doing so,
we unpack such metaphors as readily as those working on non-Daoist texts repack
them in familiar Cartesian boxes.
Body as Kingdom/Cosmos
The heart is the principle organ par excellence which gives vital blood, heat,
and spirit to all other members of the entire body. It is located in the vety
middte of the chest, as befits its role as king in the midst of his kingdom.
Henry of Mandeville2T
If, despite the fact that Daoists believed their bodies host to multitudes of spirits,
they speak of the self in ways identical to those employed in lands where single
souls are the rule, what need was there to speak of a multi-part body? Complicated
modes of discourse such as this one are created to answer some need. We should
then attempt to isolate what that purpose might be. For example, one of the
foundational Daoist texts expressing the metaphor of the body as kingdom proceeds
as follows:
Of the myriad things to which heaven gave birth, humans are the most
exalted. A single human body enfolds heaven and earth, sun and moon.
mountains and streams, rivers and oceans. . . [The list extends through spirits
and entities of heaven and earth, to] bamboo, trees, and all the plants. All are
imaged therein. There are also established the emperor, the three Lords and
nine Chamberlains [through all the levels of imperial bureaucracy down to
1ocal|y-appointed officials]; palaces and residences fthrough domestic
necessities down to the nourishment necessary for this pantheon].28
The text then lists coffespondences between the human body and the macrocosm.
These are of the "the human head is round and images heaven; feet are square and
modeled on earth" type common to Chinese correlative cosmology. Here too
bureaucratic imagery is employed, associating specific body parts with the list given
above. Finally, we are given the secret names of a number of the body's resident
deities.
Cited in Jacques Le Gofi "Head or Heart: The Political Use of Body Metaphors in the Middle
Ages," Fragments for a History of the Human Body, Michel Feher, ed. (New York: Zone,
1989) 3:23.
Hy 388, Taishang lingbao wufu xu f I--ffiHAf+E 1.19b3-21a3, mercifully abbreviated.
27
28 Wuar Deorsr Boov?
Perhaps exhausted by the drzzyrng specificity of all of this, modern scholars rarely
emphasize the express purpose of the catalogue.tn The list ends with a series of
injunctions that one should call out the names of the spirits at times of particular
peril - when one is about to sleep, when one is ill or in pain, when the season is a
dangerous one, or simply to "secure the cloudsouls and control the whitesouls" - the
last a concern we have met with above.30 The purpose of knowing one's body houses
multiple spirits, then, is so that one might keep them at home.
The kingdom of the body proves, then, to be a kingdom not unlike the ones
Daoists experienced in their quotidian lives; over-articulated, refractory, and of brief
duration, the kingdom harbored competing focii of authority and the ever-present
danger of rebellion. The fractious self was simply not something upon which one
could rely. That, I think, was the point of adopting the multi-part body mode of
discourse. The metaphor speaks to our daily adult experience of diminution and loss
as our powers lessen and our sense of control weakens. It speaks to the fear that what
is most intimate and personal to us, our bodies, will def,, us; that our proper
impulses and passions will betray us, leading in directions that will result in the
ultimate dissolution of death. But, we need to notice even this way of describing the
matter implies an essential self that holds these concerns. And always, in such
invocations of the multi-spirit body, that essential self is enjoined to reassert control,
reverse the decline, and tame the errant spirits of the body.
At first glance, such considerations do not seem to hold for one other frequent
case in which Daoist texts mention the multi-spirit body, that of the Daoist master
conducting ritual. While Daoist ritual is enormously complex and developed greatly
over time, one irreducible component seems to be the dispatching of petitions to the
celestial bureaucracy on behalf of individuals or of the community. To accomplish
this, the Daoist master often summons from his (or, more rarely, her) body the
resident spirits, either to deliver the petition themselves or to form a suitably august
procession as the master ascends for that purpose.3' The procedure is sometimes
known as chuguan IEH, literally "exteriorizing the officials." Such descriptions
would seem to have nothing in common with those we have surveyed so far, for the
Schipper, for instance, calls such accounts "beautiful vision[s]. related to a rich and meaningful mythology." (Taoist Body, p. l0a). Here, too, the Subject is invoked as the essential self of the person performing the rite. Given that the procedure is prescriptive, however. the essential self is expressed with the second- person singular pronoun 'oyou" T, while the various spirits, aspects of the self, are designated with the third-person pronouns "them/their" /_lH. See HY 388, I .21b7-22a1. The procedure seems to date back to the earliest days of the Daoist religion. See Ursula- Angelika Cedzich, Das Ritual der Himmelsmeister im Spiegel fiiiher Quellen: Ubersetzung und Untersuchung des liturgischen Materials im dritten chr.ictn des Teng-chen yin-chiieh, Wiirzburg: Ph.D diss., Julius-Maximilians-Universitiit, 1987, pp. 65-77. For more examples, see Bokenkamp, Early Daoist Scriptures, p. 414, and Judith M. Boltz, "Opening the Gates of Purgatory: A Twelfth Century Technique for the Salvation of Lost Souls," in Tantric and Taoist Studies in Honour of R.A. Stein, Michel Strickmann, ed. (Bruxelles: Mdlanges Chinois et Bouddhiques XXI, 1983) 2:488-510.
t4l
31 142 StBpssN R. BorsNraup
body of the Daoist master is described in such cases as powerful and competent,
rather than threatened and fragmentary.
But, on closer examination, threat is involved here in at least two ways. First, and
most obviously, the Daoist master is responding to threatened dissolution in the
social body with which his own, personal body is allied. Through the metonymic
chains of interconnection that underlie correlative cosmology, calling the spirits of
an individual body to heal the greater body is precisely the same calling on the self
in meditation to heal an errant part of the individual body. Second, the Daoist
master's own body is often portrayed as implicitly "threatened" by this act of
compassionate disembodiment. Chuguan invocations are thus regularly preceded by
meditations or incantations meant to guard and secure the body's forces.32 A simple
example might be found in the directions for correct recitation of the Scripture of
Salvation:
On the days on which you practice this Dao, you should bathe in perfumed
water. Then, having purified and observed the prohibitions, enter your
chamber. Facing east, knock your teeth thirty-two times to alert the Thirty-
two heavens on high. Then mentally bow thirty-two times.33 Shutting your
eyes, in stillness imagine yo-ur body seated in the midst of tri-colored clouds
of green, yellow, and white.'o Both within and without it is obscure and dark.
To the left and the right, anayed closely beside you, are the green dragon, the
white tiger, the vermilion sparrow, the murky warrior, the lion, and the white
crane.3t The sun and moon, in fulI luminescence, shine penetratingly into the
chamber. From the back of your neck emerges a round image which, with its
beams, shines into the ten directions.'u When all of this appears clearly before
you as described, secretly incant as follows:37 "Most High Lord of the Dao of
See, for instance, Schipper, Taoist Body, p. 96 and Bokenkamp, Early Daoist Scriptures, pp.
413-14. For a description of a modern parallel, see John Lagerwey, Taoist Ritual, especially
pages 70-71.
Li Shaowei specifies that each of these prostrations should be performed facing the direction of
the heaven to which the obeisance is directed and accompanied by visualizations of the thirty-
two thearchs. (See HY 87, 1.30b-31a)
These are the colors of the three original pneumas: the mysterious pneuma is green, the prirnal
pneuma yellow and the inaugural pneuma, white. Here, their function is to protect the body in
primordial unity.
The green dragon, white tiger, vermilion sparrow, and the "murky warrior" are the directional
animals of the east, west, south and north, respectively. Beginning in the Han period, these
animals are commonly depicted on the walls of tombs as guardians in the four directions. The
"murky warrior" is usually depicted as a turtle wrapped about with a snake or sometimes a
turtle with the head of a snake. The lion and the white crane seem here to be symbols of the
center, below and above.
This "round image" is in fact like the halo that appears on Buddhist and Daoist images of
deities in this period. The "ten directions" are the eight points of the wind rose, above and
below. 37 The names of these deities were listed in the registers bestowed on each initiate. See HY 352,
JZ
JJ
34
35 Wsnr Daorsr Boov?
the ultimate Mysterious and Primordial pneumas, summon from this seryant's
[:my] body the official envoys [names excised]. . . to inform those on high of
what I say.t*
In this metaphorical understanding of the self, placement of the subject is, at least
potentially, a site of contention. Thus the body of the officiant is symbolically
returned to the state of primordial wholeness and gird about with spiritual protectors
before the "officials" of the body can be confidently sent forth.
Other attempts to come to terms with potential physical fragmentation include
meditational and what we would call "medical" interventions, as well as
technologies for mapping the cosmology of the body such as the wang-xiang or
"king-minister" system, which view the five major organs as ruling in a regularrzed
cycle.3e These technologies and descriptions of the body do fit Lakoff and Johnson's
Folk Theory of Essences. That is to say, no matter how powerful, threatened, or
elusive the spirits of the body might prove, there is always an implied "essential"
Subject that is specifically enjoined as unifying the forces of the body and ensuring
wholeness. This essential self is never designated by any of the words we have
regularly translated "soul." It is neither the "cloudsoul(s)" ffi, nor the "whitesoul(s)"
EH - terms I will henceforth not use in my translations. Neither is it the heart/mind,
ruler of the body. True, each of these are sometimes portrayed as potentially (and
sometimes actually) appropriating the role of self, but the true desired self is, as in
the cases Lakoff and Johnson have studied, always located in the Subject. This
Subject, the essential self, is most reliably identified in grammatical structures, since
rules of propriety mandate that the first person pronoun is seldom used in Chinese
writing. In the example given above, for example, there is no Chinese word, beyond
"this seryant" ffi - a common humilific first-person pronoun, to identify the self.
The self who is, in the second person description of the practice, to "knock the
teeth," "mentally bow," and "imagine" (or "visualize"), etc., is understood by the
rules of Chinese grammar. Since we understand this to be the case, multi-spirit
metaphors have in some contexts proven difficult to locate, and easy to ignore.
Taishang dongxuan lingbao chishu yujue miaojing
^-tild*ffiHfrgE-F*fr9lr#,3.30a-32a for the portion of the Lingbao investiture in which the gods first are charged to descend into the
initiate.
Bokenkamp, Early D aois t Scriptures, pp. 413 -41 4.
HY 388, the text cited at the beginning of this section is one of these. According to its
description, the spirit of the liver is the 'oruler" of the body in spring, the spirit of the heart in
summer, or the lungs in autumn, of the kidneys in winter, and of the spleen during a special
series of days in the lunar sixth month. (HY 388, 1.16b-18b.)
143
38
39 r44 SrppunN R. BotcnNxarup
The Erasure of Multi-spirit Body Metaphors in pre-Daoist texts
Can you think of anything more frishtful than that it might end with your
nature being resolved into a multipliciQ, that you really might become many,
become, like those unhappy demoniacs, a legion, that you thus would have
lost the inmost and holiest thing of all in a man, the unifuing power of
personality?
Ssren Kierkegaarda'
Having outlined some of the ways in which the multi-spirit body metaphor is
employed in Daoism and having freed ourselves from the necessity of looking for
specific terms, whether ^hfrh or fF -& ot iF, that we might feel comforlable in
translating "soul," we will now look at occurrences of similar metaphors in earlier
texts.
Before we begin, there are a few impediments in our path that need to be, if not
removed, at least noticed at the outset. First, my definition of "pre-Daoist" depends
unabashedly on Strickmann's definition of the term "Daoist" as denoting the social
entity that arose in the 2nd century CE and those movements descended from it. This
is not a universally-accepted definition. Indeed, Kristofer Schipper, Isabelle Robinet,
and others trace the religion back to pre-Han times, to the ideas of shadowy figures
and perhaps master-disciple lineages whose existence is attested in texts that later
Daoists took to be their patrimony. Second, in a related definitional mood, those who
study pre-Han traditions of Chinese thought seem quite willing to relinquish
anything that seerns too closely related to what later became Daoism to these same
shadowy figures. The result of all this is that scholarly terrain has sometimes been
mapped out in ways that discourage our further investigation. Even if I am able to
show that philosophers, while they did not employ it in all cases (but neither did
later Daoists!), took recourse to the multi-spirit body metaphor on occasion, these
passages can be dismissed as "Daoist influence" or perhaps as "religious belief'that
has somehow been transubstantiated in the crucible of Confucian thought.This latter
danger is the most pressing. Translation obliterates the metaphorical systems in
favor of those of the target language and all modern observers unwittingly
superimpose the metaphorical structures with which they think over the "dead
metaphors" of bygone times. Thus, even excellent scholars will sometimes miss the
clear implications of texts with which they deal. Part of this failure can be attributed
to our modern attempts to make clear distinctions between what we see as "religion"
and "philosophy." Witness A. C. Graham's discussion of the term shenming IFDE as
it occurs in the "Inward Training" chapter of the Guanzi. Acknowledging that the
term generally refers to macrocosmic spirits and citing an interesting passage from
the Sayings of the States lflifi to demonstrate the way in which early mediums, in
40 Ssren Kierkegaard, Either/Or, trans. Walter Lowrie, (New York: Doubleday Anchor, 1959),
vol.2. p. 164. Wuar Deolsr Bopv? 145
calling down such spirits, experienced "brightening of the senses" and increased
wisdom, Graham goes on to argue against what seems to me the commensensical
view that shenming {FEE might likewise mean "spirits" when the term refers to the
body or its operations. Graham writes:
But by this period, the gods and ghosts, like Heaven itself, are in the direction
of becoming depersonalised though still vaguely numinous forces of nature.
One scarcely meets a named spirit in the philosophical literature. . . Man
himself can aspire, not indeed to omniscience (since Chinese thinking does
not deal in absolutes), but to that supremely lucid awareness which excites a
shudder of numinous awe. . . The shamanic origin of the exercise ffound in
the "Inward Training"] is plain. The point of it however is not to become a
medium for the gods or for deceased ancestors. . Its purpose is to clarify
senses and heart to a numinous owareness . . The exercise, by stilling
personal desires, opens the heart to be overwhelmed by spontaneous forces
from outside the self.al
Notice how ardently the boundaries are defended. As we have seen above, later
Daoists "name" the body's resident deities for specific pu{poses. Here, the fact that
"philosophers" do not name them indicates not that philosophers might have been
engaged in a fundamentally different enterprise than were contemporary mediums,
ritualists, and later Daoists, but that the gods themselves "are becoming
depersonalized," since gods can have nothing to do with "awareness." The proper
forces "from outside the self' for philosophers are "spontaneous" and contribute to
clear thinking, not mediumship.a2
So strongly are the barricades built, that we can see that Graham has recognized
that the single word IFEE should refer to one category of thing, whether described as
in the body or out of it. ln place of "spirit(s)," he substitutes words that, while
accounting for the spiritual dimensions of the term, reflect more closely the religious
thought of his own time and place: "numinous awareness," by which he seems to
mean something like "heightened awareness" (an intellectual quality as denatured as
the modern senses of "inspiration") and "daimonic and clear-seeing" for shenming
+FW.ot Graham further borrows, apparently from Rudolph Otto, Western concepts
4l Graham, Disputers, pp. 100-105. (Emphases my own). 42 Graham's assertions here are at least in part stimulated by his desire to free "lnward Training" from any taint of Daoism. He states the matter forcefully: "this is not yet Daoism, for the Way is still the practice of the familiar moral virtues." 43 I do not mean to suggest that Chinese thinkers were not using concepts of shenming to explore the workings of the heart/mind, but rather that shenming were not in any simple way equated with concepts like "thought" or "knowledge." Treating the word as if one hall lF, referred to "spirits" while the other, !,[, refers to operations of mind is, I think, scarcely defensible. For the way EE refers to spiritual qualities, see Henri Maspero, "Le mot ming" Journal asiatique, 223(1933), 249-56" Terms connoting "brightness, luminescence," shuang N. for instance, appear frequently in early discussions ofspirits and ancestral practice. T46 SrppupN R. BoreNrerrp
on the nature and universality of religious sentiment in suggesting that the term
might have seemed appropriate for practices that "excite a shudder of numinous
awe."44 How does he know all this? As no passage of the text is cited in support of
these views, Graham's assumptions seem to be based solely on his presumption that
ancient Chinese imagined their bodies to be much as moderns so often imagine
theirs - a Cartesian machine-like container for a singular "self."45 The result is a
satisfying account, but only in terms of Western metaphorical systems, not those of
the author of "Inward Training."
For our own purposes, one wants to know whether we should perhaps read IFEB in the plural, as Graham himself does when the term refers to spirits in the
macrocosm. The usually cautious scholar is silent on why the same word might
express a plural in the macrocosm, but needs to be read in the singular when it refers
to the body. Further, Graham does not speculate as to what it might have meant for
those who wrote his texts to "open the heart" or "still the desires" - indeed he
provides no account of the body at all. Sensitized by our reading of the Daoist
passages above, the following, even in Graham's translation, seems to present the
heart as anodyne for the threatened body, meant to control if not separate spirits, at
least a network of potential sources of dissolution:
With the heart fixed within,
Sight is clear, hearing distinct,
The four limbs are hard and firm.
And can become an abode for the quintessential.
The "quintessential" is the quintessence of ch'i l:pneuma]46
John Knoblock, in his full translation and study of the Xunzi, provides an interesting
appendix on the term shenming, reprising Graham's strict division between
supposed senses of shenming. For Knoblock as well, whenever shenming draw near
the human body, they transform, this time into "spirit-like intelligence." He deduces
three aspects. Shenming is "1) efficacious, being able to relate to the Way and to
produce fortune or misfortune;2) it is within the person and possessed by him and 3)
it is a faculty or state involving mental functions."aT
See Rudolf Otto, The Idea of the Holy, John W. Harvey, tr. (1rtrew York: Oxford University Press, 1958), especially pages 12-19 wherein Otto describes the "shudder" and "daemonic dread" that accompanies recognition of the sacred. If he was not thinking of Rudolf Otto, I am not certain why Graham thought that the term "daimonic" an appropriate translation for his depersonalized shen. He provides no explanation in this book. Nor does he seek to justifu his assertion that the Gods were depersonalized in the Chinese thought of this period. He does demonstrate that Confucius, and those that follorved him, refused to discuss whether or not spirits existed, believing their proper concem to be human affairs (Disputers, pp. l5-18,241). But this is a difTerent issue. Graham, Disputers, p. 102.
John Knoblock, Xunzi: A Translation and Study of the Complete Works, (Stanford: Stanford University Press, I 988), Vol. l, pp. 252-55.
45
4647 WHar Deorsr Boov? t47
Unaccountably, in one passage that Knoblock translates, the "spirit-like intelligence"
loses the simile marker, which was supplied at any rate by the translator rather than
by anything in any Chinese text, to become "spiritual intelligence."
The mind is lord of the body and master of the spiritual intelligence
lshenming]. It issues commands but does not receive commands. On its own
authority it forbids or orders, renounces or selects, initiates or stops. Thus, the
mouth can be forced to be silent or to speak. The body can be forced to
crouch down or stretch out.a8
,L,#,MLtr&, mi+wz+&,. H+mffiFfr-y+ E+e,. Hfte,. H€e,.
E 4x e,. fr ft #,. H lh &,. frft tr E] *lr ffi 'ft ffi x, YtEf Htffij'fF ;t 4+ .
The terms used here for the executive actions of the heart/mind - forbid or
proscribe ff, order or despatch {F, renounce or dismiss from office @, select E-!, put
into circulation f1, stop lt - are precisely the actions a ruler takes with respect to his
officials, their proposals, and his orders governing them. This is why the heart is
described as "lord and master" EL. And who are the "officials" of this "lord"? The
normal assumptions of parallel construction in classical Chinese do not require that
we see the body and the shenming as two separate entities. Indeed, it would seem
imperative grammatically to translate shenming in the plural and take "mouth" and
"bodily form" as synecdoche for a range of physical powers, each controlled by
shenming.ae
The threat that calls forth the above metaphor is that the heart will not be unified
and so not properly fulfill its executive function, so Xunzi does not here contemplate
the fact that these officials might arrogate to themselves the ruling role of the heart.
Elsewhere he does. Knoblock translates:
When the work of Nature ltian f, "heaven"] has been established and its
achievements perfected, the physical form becomes whole and the spirit ffi is
born. Love and hate, delight and anger, sorrow and joy, are stored within -
these are described as "the emotions given us by nature." The eye, ear, nose,
mouth, and body each have the capacity to provide sense contact, but their
capacities are not interchangeable - these are termed the "faculties given us
by nature." The heart/mind that dwells within the central cavity is used to
control the five faculties - it is called "the lord provided by nature." The mind
Knoblock, Vol. III, p. 105.
In his Early Chinese Medical Literature: The Mawangdui Medical Manuscripfs, (London:
Kegan Paul International, 1998, pp. 121-22), Donald Harper accepts the interpretations of
Graham and Knoblock, yet detects a different meaning of shenming in the early medical
literature: "whereas philosophical texts use ideas of spirit and spirit-illumination to speculate on
the nature of the mental faculties, in macrobiotic hygiene spirit illumination is a kind of mana
which those who practice cultivation can concentrate in their body...I suspect that the
macrobiotic concept of spirit illumination is older than the philosophical one." The word
"mana" is, I suspect, another way of avoiding discussion of bodily spirits.
48
49 148 SrppupN R. BorBNrnrrap
takes advantage of things not belonging to the human species and uses them
for the nourishment of humans - these are termed "the nourishment provided
by nature." The mind calls what conforms to the properties of its category
"fortunate and what rebels against the properties of its category "cursed" -
this is called "the rule of order in nature." To darken one's natural lord, bring
confusion to the natural faculties, reject one's natural nourishment, rebel
against the natural rule of order, turn one's back on the natural emotions, and
thereby destroy the achievement of nature - this is indeed called the "Great
Calamity."so
XffiFtU, XrhgfiFk, ytfutnl#+. {T-H, E*, F#rfitr . *frziHx,lE.
HFJ, FE, Y"fr?, &HWtrnTfHFE&,.*frZ-nHXH ,L'E+, ffiJ)/ifitrH.
*EZ;H7ta_.FT)F^HXF,!IE^H+F.*ft Z="HXE.IIF^H{F#,"==HZ+E.U
HXEA, ;HZliE. X tZdH f &. HEtrXE, ffi LH
^H,
F^H { E, EHXrt{,
HFX{E, DlWXrh, XtA;Ht X.
Based on a passage from the Zuo zhuan, Knoblock claims that "Xunzi is clearly
using shen llfl, "spirit"] in a sense different than that discussed in the Introduction to
this book," but the sense he ascribes to the term turns out to differ little: "[it is] the
animating spirit within the body and . . . the refinement of this into intelligence and
reason."5r More to the point, while noting that it exists, Knoblock ignores the
metaphorical system Xunzi employs in this passage in translating guan "official," as
"faculties." Now, there is no doubt that in ancient Chinese texts, guan ff denoted the
bodily organs, or more properly the activities and orbits of influence exerted by the
bodily organs, but the term guan metaphorically represents these faculties in a
precise way, as officials of the bodily administration that we have described.52
Xunzi describes the heaven-granted ability of the heart to rule in terms of the
economy of the realm. The properly attuned heart can "make resources F4 of what is
not its type [the nurturance of Heaven] to nourish what is of its type," that is, the
officials of the body. These officers, though they also "receive" +* sense
impressions from outside the body, are not to appropriate to themselves capabilities
Knoblock, Vol III, p. 16. Knoblock, Vol III, p. 297, note 20. Note that there is no evidence of the "refinement" of the shen in the Xunzi. Knoblock requires some text that will move from the alien shen of Xunzi to naturalized shenming so that he might connect the sense of the term once more to "mind." This the Zuo Zhuan provides fbr him. Donald Harper has recently suggested that Chinese thinkers first imagined the organs metaphorically as "storehouses" and "official residences" in the body and only later conceived of a spirit administration to occupy the inner architecture. (Harper, "Metaphorical Body" **get**) This is a possible scenario. Notice here, though, that ff is the normal word for "officer, official...". If the orderly development Harper hypothesizes occurred, it was completed by Xunzi's time. Judging from the range of evidence I have surveyed in this preliminary stage of my work, it seems likely that the "multi-spirit" metaphor first appears in texts associated with the Jixia Academy in the 4'n century BCE. This does not mean that other forms of the metaphor did not exist earlier.
50
5l
52 WHar Daorsr Boov? r49
that go beyond their specific functions. The "lord" fheart/mind] who is not vigilant,
or becomes benighted EE, in this task this risks insurrection [ffil, U]. The emotions,
associated by juxtaposition with both the officers of the body and spirits that animate
it, provide the only possible motive forces in the passage that might actuate such
rebellion. Thus the lord should "remain empty [or passionless] in order to rule them"
ffiUhZ (there is no mention of bodily "cavities" here). Absent the conceptual
logic of this metaphorical framework. the passage loses its purpose and becomes
little more than an imasinative list of bodv functions.
Conclusion
It seems to me undeniable that the metaphors describing the body explored above are
continuous with the Daoist metaphors I cited at the beginning of this paper. This
continuity resides not in the names given or even in the specifics of the body
metaphors employed, but in the fact that texts over a long span of time and
originating from different schools of thought employ variants of a basic metaphor
describing the body as potentially divided between different power centers and
requiring reunification or control. What I am suggesting, in short, was that the
"multi-spirit body" was a metaphor employed for a specific purpose. That purpose
was to describe the dangers of psycho-physical dissolution.t'Absent that pu{pose,
both earlier and later Chinese writers were free to speak of the self in other ways,
much as we do. In fact, even when speaking of the multi-spirit body, there is always
an essential self that is called upon to unify the diverse forces of the body, counter
dissolution, and return the self to psycho-physical wholeness. This essential self,
located often in the grammatical understandings of literary Chinese, often takes for
us Western translators center stage, leading some to overlook the place and roles of
the multi-spirit body metaphor in the texts we study.
53 I have not used modern computer resources to collect examples of this deployment of the multi- part body in pre-Han texts, but I have collected a number of examples from my own reading. I
here append one more from the "Explaining Laozi" chapter of the Han Feizi: Glossing the
opening of the De section of the Laozi, he writes "Virtue (d" t,*) is internal; attainment (de t3) is external. _tf*4l* means that one's finternal] spirits do not overflow if to the outside.
When one's spirits do not overflow, one's body is whole. When one's body is whole it is called "attainment" f$. What is "attained" is (wholeness of) body. 1F#,f1&. 'I+#, ,lM. '-fJ,*T
{H' -^Hl+Ti.dfiAtl&,. lfiTi+ftrf, FUH+. H+i-AHE. E#, tlH. (Han Feizi jijie,
Zhlzi jicheng edition, 20:95) For this gloss to make sense, the text would have to be recited
rather than read with the eye. I suspect that Han Feizi reads the Laozi passage tf$Tf$ as
"those of higher [internal] virhre do not [need to] attain [externally]. That is, since their spirits
do not "overflow" and leave their body, they have inner "attainment" rather than external. Later
in the chapter, he is even more explicit concerning the body's spirits: "What is called 'demonic
calamity' fi comes about when the cloudsouls and the whitesouls depart and the essences and
spirits are thrown into disorder. When the essences and spirits are thrown into disorder, this is
to lack virtue." nFftAHH#, "ftfrHffnffifFffit fElFffiLFUftfF (p. los) 150 StspHnN R. BorENrRnp
We might fruitfully extend our discussion by searching for similarities and
differences in the ways various Chinese thinkers employed the multi-spirit body
metaphor. Here, I will only briefly mention what I regard as promising lines for
future research. It may prove the case, for instance, that writers employing the multi-
spirit body metaphor also held similar cosmogonic views, regarding the universe as
originally whole and pure and devolving into a potentially chaotic state as it divided
to constitute the myriad forms of existence. Such concordance between the
microcosmic body and the macrocosmic kingdom and cosmos is a familiar feature of
Chinese thought. By this view, the task of returning to healthy wholeness for both
"philosophical" and "religious" thinkers would reside in recognizing and warning of
possible sources of dissolution.
The differences between pre-Han deployments and later Daoist deployments of
the multi-spirit metaphor are many and well worth further exploration. Pre-Han
texts, with their concern for the self-cultivation and efficacy of the Sage, use the
metaphor sparingly and primarily to describe the dangers inherent in unbridled
emotion or overindulgence in the senses. As we saw in the case of the Lingbao
version of the "six penetrating wisdoms" adduced at the beginning of this essay,
Daoist writers sometimes employ the metaphor in this way as well, but they are
much more concerned with mapping the kingdom of the body. And this greater
concern points to a wider range of purposes. Portrayals of the multi-part body are
important to cultivation practice, ritual description, and to depictions of the gods,
models for emulation with their perfectly unified bodies, to name but a few areas of
concern. We might further expand the range of our researches to include Chinese
Buddhist texts which, while they do not do so often, also find occasion to portray the
multi-spirit body in pursuit of their religious goals.
Finally, though, I want here to stress again the concern with which I began this
essay. Daoist texts cry out to be brought into conversation with the other texts of the
society that produced them. It was, naturally, the frequent mention of the multi-part
body in Daoist scripture that brought me to pursue this subject at all. That Graham
and Knoblock, though aware of research on the Daoist religion, chose not to even
mention its findings or allude to the possibility that something similar might be
occurring in their texts says more about the distinctions modern scholars make than
about those to be found in the history of Chinese thought. We cannot, I think,
assume that when early Chinese texts refer to guan in the body they really mean
'oseats of emotion;" that when they speak of shenming, they actually mean to say
"intelligence," and so on. To do so is to make serpents of little girls. Our task is
rather to explore insofar as possible the metaphorical systems by which various
Chinese writers expressed their conceptions, and through which they understood
them.