Daoist Cosmology Research Articles

La Stimmung du paysage dans l’esthétique allemande et les concepts esthétiques chez Wang Fuzhi et Wang Guowei

This article examines the concept of qingjing (sentiment-landscape) and its related aesthetic notions, such as qingjing (sentiment-scene) and yijing (idea-scene) in Wang Fuzhi’s and Wang Guowei’s aesthetic theories. We will compare these categories of aesthetics with the German aesthetic notion of Stimmung from the early Romanticism to Schopenhauer and investigate into parallel evolutions and influence studies. Although Goethe, Schiller, and Schopenhauer do not belong to the group of German Romantics, their conception of Stimmung and the spiritual eye draw on aesthetics of German Romanticism. Wang Fuzhi’s conception of qingjing is still inscribed into Chinese classical thought, such as Daoist cosmology based on the original Breath and the epistemology of Indian Buddhism, such as pramāṇa (measure). We will compare the parallelism in thought evolution regarding Wang Fuzhi’s theory of qingjing and the German concept of Stimmung, both as a crystallization and intertwinement of indissociable sentiment and landscape. Many German writers proclaim that landscape is the projection of subjective emotions from inside to outside, so it can be understood as an externalization of Stimmung. According to Wang Fuzhi, sentiment unfolds as landscape, and landscape, driven by a vital impulse, is truly endowed with emotion. There is still a dichotomy between subject and object related to Stimmung, but this is not the case for qingjing. Moreover, we will also investigate the direct influence of Stimmung on Wang Guowei’s conception of qingjing and jingjie, since Wang Guowei has already been influenced by the aesthetics of German Romanticism and Idealism, especially the notion of Stimmung. This influence also contributes to Wang Guowei’s deviation from Wang Fuzhi’s aesthetic theory.

Dual Canonization: A Study of the Identity and Cult of Li Zhong, the Protagonist of a Chinese Scroll Held by the Metropolitan Museum of Art

Dual Canonization:A Study of the Identity and Cult of Li Zhong, the Protagonist of a Chinese Scroll Held by the Metropolitan Museum of Art Mengxiao Wang This study investigates the historical background of a deity named Li Zhong 李忠, the protagonist of a Chinese scroll held by the Metropolitan Museum of Art (hereafter the Met) with colophons dated 1641. Previous scholarship has examined the Daoist ritual of canonization presented on the scroll and its pictorial treatment of time and space,1 but has not yet identified its main figure, Li Zhong (Figure 1). This lack of knowledge about Li Zhong's identity has led to some misinterpretations of the presence of a controversial Song date on this Ming scroll (Figure 2). The multiple titles that it has borne over time best illustrate the challenges involved in interpreting this piece of artwork and identifying its protagonist. One of the colophons dated 1641 [End Page 429] indicates its possible original title, Xianhou shoulu tujuan 賢候[侯]受籙圖 (Figure 3),2 which literally means "picture scroll of a worthy marquis receiving [Daoist] registers." Since the scroll first arrived at the Met in 1938,3 it has had at least four different English titles: Li Chung Receives a Mandate,4 Investiture of a Local God,5 Investiture of a Daoist Deity,6 and Canonization Scroll of Li Zhong.7 Is Li Zhong a local god, a Daoist deity, a noble marquis, or all three? Drawing on a comparative reading of the colophons on the scroll and related historical accounts, this study will uncover the identity of Li Zhong and illuminate the evolution of his cult from the middle period to the late imperial period. I argue that as a local god, Li Zhong experienced a dual canonization, first receiving the official title of marquis (hou 侯) from the central government during the Song dynasty and then being granted Daoist registers by a Heavenly Master in the Ming dynasty. I will start with a brief introduction to the scroll and then closely examine one of its colophons alongside a gazetteer entry concerning Li Zhong. After this, I will review the current scholarly opinions about the Song date on this Ming scroll and propose a new potential explanation for it based on the discovery of Li Zhong's identity. Finally, I will [End Page 430] contextualize this scroll within the dynamics of state canonization and the investiture by Daoist clergy from the Song to the Ming dynasties. Uncovering Li Zhong's Identity from a Local Gazetteer The scroll comprises a painting, an inscription, and two colophons, on the basis of which recent scholarship has constructed the narrative that Li Zhong received a canonization from Daoist institutions. The painting portrays Li Zhong and his attendants processing into the celestial court where the Jade Emperor (Yuhuang 玉皇), the ruler of Heaven in Daoist cosmology, and other Daoist deities dwell.8 Following the painting, an inscription celebrates Li Zhong's merits as a local deity and describes the procedure by which he was invested into the Daoist pantheon. It lists three Daoist registers conferred on him by the fiftieth Heavenly Master through a proxy, a local priest named Li Daoqing 李道清.9 Given the biographical information of the fiftieth Heavenly Master, Zhang Guoxiang 張國祥 (titled 1577, d. 1611), this Daoist canonization ritual should have occurred between 1577 and 1611, and the scroll was probably created contemporaneously with the ritual.10 This inscription also functions as a textual certificate,11 which records that the Jade Emperor promotes Li Zhong to the position of "Minister of the Thunder Bureau in the Golden Palace of the Three Heavens" 三天金闕雷部書 and the "Perfected Man of Illustrious Response and Numinous Assistance Who Ensures Security" 保安顯應霊濟人, assigning his duty as "taking charge of the twelve City Gods' affairs" 提舉十二城隍事. [End Page 431] Two colophons were added later after the inscription. The first of these was inscribed in the seventh month of 1641 by a Ming imperial descendant named Zhu Zhongsu 朱中梀 (n.d.), who was appointed to Shicheng 石城 county in Jiangxi province.12 In this colophon, Zhu praises Li Zhong's protection of the local people and records how this scroll was produced and renewed. According to Zhu's record, his fellow townsmen had fashioned the...

Cultivating Compassion 慈: A Daoist Perspective

The purpose of this paper is to make a contribution to our working knowledge, practice and pedagogy of compassion through consideration of a Daoist perspective on the matter. I begin with a consideration of Daoist cosmology and a sage’s compassion drawn primarily from the Daodejing, This serves as a backdrop to consider Daoist contemplative pedagogy for the cultivation of virtue and compassion. Consistent with Daoist practices which rely on exemplars as a means of inspiring others I justify considering Nelson Mandela an exemplar of compassion. I then discuss how his life lines up with the Daoist conception of compassion. Finally I discuss the practicalities of developing compassion along with other virtues in post-secondary business ethics education classes. These classes work with the following principles: starting small, self- compassion, person to person connections and relationship. Students engage in emotional intelligence activities including: exercises to know their purpose or calling, meditative exercises that help them become aware of their emotions, and structured interpersonal interaction challenging them to develop new social skills. While this work is in its early stages it appears to assist students in developing compassion for others.

Occulting the Dao: Daoist Inner Alchemy, French Spiritism, and Vietnamese Colonial Modernity in Caodai Translingual Practice

This article takes the case of the Vietnamese Cao Dai religion to examine how Asian religious leaders and translators, in a context of colonial modernity, invested a European language with their own cosmologies and discourses, building both a national identity and an alternative spiritual universalism. Studies of translation in colonial contexts have tended to focus on the processes and impact of translating European texts and ideas into the languages of the colonized. This article discusses the inverse process, examining how Caodai textual production used French spiritist language and tropes to occult its Chinese roots, translating Daoist cosmology into a universalist and anti-colonial spiritual discourse rooted in Vietnamese nationalism. These shifts are examined through a close examination of translingual practices in the production and translation of the core esoteric scripture of Caodaism, theĐại Thừa Chơn Giáo 大乘真教(The True Teachings of the Great Vehicle), rendered in its 1950 Vietnamese-French edition asThe Bible of the Great Cycle of Esotericism.This study demonstrates how colonial religious institutions and networks of circulation in Asia stimulate the emergence of new movements and textual practices that mimic, invert, jumble, and transcend the cosmologies of both the Chinese imperium and the European colonial regime.

Translation of Daodejing in English: its place and time

Daodejing, one of the Chinese Classics, has the second largest translated versions in the world, second to the Bibles. Since the 1st English version translated by John Chalmers in 1868, there are different retranslations in western countries, typically in the US and the UK. Daodejing gets its “rebirth” or “rewriting” in different places through different times. Different time and places constitute different historical, social and cultural context. This paper focuses on the translation and retranslation of Daodejing by James Legge in the nineteenth century, Arthur Waley in the twentieth century and Roger Ames and David Hall in the twenty-first century, which context is respectively featured by Christian background, western culture centralism and the co-existence of multi-cultures. This paper reveals the differences of the interpretation and translation of Daodejing by the above mentioned translators. Some key vocabularies such as “Dao”, “De”, “Tian”, “Wu Wei” etc. are analyzed, meanwhile their different translations are illustrated in terms of vocabulary. In the meantime, the contemporary retranslation of Daodejing by Roger Ames and David Hall will be shed light on. They interpret the traditional Chinese natural cosmology via the focus and field theory. In this philosophical translation of Daodejing, the gerund and “language cluster” are applied in accordance with the Chinese vocabularies in the original text of Daodejing to illustrate a holistic, dynamic Daoist cosmology. As an open text, Daodejing has been rooted in the alien places and has gained its niche in the delineation of translated texts in different periods of time. The after-life of the original text of Daodejing therefore, bridges the dialogue and cooperation between the east and the west based on the pursuit of harmonious development for the mankind via the translated works of the Chinese classics.

The Beginning of the Subtle School of Taoism: An Official Perception of Taoism in the Early T’ang Period by Florian C. Reiter

Reviewed by: The Beginning of the Subtle School of Taoism: An Official Perception of Taoism in the Early T’ang Period by Florian C. Reiter Jan De Meyer (bio) Florian C. Reiter. The Beginning of the Subtle School of Taoism: An Official Perception of Taoism in the Early T’ang Period. Abhandlungen für die Kunde des Morgenlandes, Band 94. Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz Verlag, 2014. viii, 127 pp. Paperback €39.00, isbn 978-3-447-10314-5. The Yiqie daojing yinyi miaomen youqi一切道經音義妙門由起 (Phonological glossary of all Daoist scriptures, and the origin of the Gateway of Subtleties, [End Page 364] Daozang 1123) is a massive two-part work in 113, 140, or possibly even 150 juan, commissioned by Tang emperor Xuanzong and compiled in 712–713 by a staff of forty-two editors under the guidance of Shi Chongxuan (d. 713). The largest part of the work, the Yiqie daojing yinyi, was lost after the Song, and only its preface, by Emperor Xuanzong, survives. The second part, the much shorter Miaomen youqi in six sections, is extant, together with its preface by Shi Chongxuan. The Miaomen youqi, a concise account of Daoist doctrine consisting of citations of older scriptures, is the object of Florian Reiter’s short monograph. In his introduction, Reiter points out the limited scope of the Miaomen youqi. Not surprising for a work compiled under imperial auspices by editors, the majority of whom were scholar-officials, the Miaomen youqi deals with the kind of Daoism that was acceptable to Confucian librarians and historians and that would have appealed to the contemporary elite. As a result, references to Daoist exorcist skills, for instance, are avoided. Despite the occasional references to major topics of Daoist philosophy, the Miaomen youqi is not a work of great depth, and neither is it a work that elucidates how exactly the Daoist clergy functioned within early Tang society. The different categories of Daoist priests, for instance, are described in the most general of ways. For example, of the lowest category, that of the libationer (jijiu 祭酒), it is said that “he reaches down to [the life of] common people and saves them to get across the world of feminine attraction and pain” (p. 86), and “They have a friendly disposition and are able to smooth out things. They neither covet nor desire. They put an end to intercourse and worldly fame, and simply display a pure mind as they faithfully rely on Tao” (p. 88). The closest we get to Daoist ritual is in the summary descriptions of the daoshi’s ritual garments. The bulk of Reiter’s monograph consists of three chapters. The first chapter (pp. 13–28) presents a translation of Shi Chongxuan’s preface to the Miaomen youqi. Chapter 2, titled “Survey and Thoughts” (pp. 29–54), paraphrases the six sections of the Miaomen youqi. These deal with the ineffable nature of the Dao and certain issues of Daoist cosmogony, Daoist deities and their different names and avatars, Daoist cosmology and sacred geography, a very general survey of Daoist practice, the different categories of priests and their respective garments, and the revelation and transmission of Daoist scriptures. Chapter 3 (pp. 55–116) contains a translation of the six sections of the Miaomen youqi. Some parts are not translated but summarized. Overall, the translation is well made and stays close to the original. There is some overlap between the second and third chapters, as a number of longish chunks of translation from Chapter 3 also appear in the second chapter. Perhaps the most striking aspect of the Miaomen youqi is that, together with so many other early Tang Daoist texts, it reveals the massive influence exerted by Buddhism on the mental outlook and the imagination of the Chinese elite. Indeed, many pages of descriptions of Daoist deities and of the magical realms they inhabit are modeled on Buddhist examples, and of course we should bear in mind that the [End Page 365] Yiqie daojing yinyi itself was inspired by older, comparable Buddhist works. Everywhere in the Miaomen youqi one senses the presence of court Daoists competing with Buddhism in an attempt to garner the respect and esteem in which Buddhism was held by...

Zhuangzi’s Meontological Notion of Time

This article investigates the concept of time as it is laid forth in the Daoist text, the Zhuangzi 莊子. Arguing that authentic time lies with cosmogony and not reality as envisioned by humanity, the Zhuangzi casts off the ontology of the present-now in favor of the existentially creative negativity of Dao 道. As the pivot of Dao, nothingness not only allows us to side-step the issue of temporal directionality, it reflects the meontological nature of Daoist cosmology in general. Framing time in terms of the motion of nothingness, this paper concludes that the authentic time of Dao reveals itself through the principle of creation qua rest. Experiencing such temporal self-grounding, the sage becomes existentially awakened such that temporal ekstases becomes unfathomable.

Why Talk about Chinese Metaphysics

Chinese philosophy in the twentieth century has often been related to some sort of cultural or other particularism or some sort of philosophical universalism. By and large, these still seem to be the terms along which academic debates are carried out. The tension is particularly manifest in notions such as “Chinese philosophy,” “Daoist cosmology,” “Neo-Confucian idealism,” or “Chinese metaphysics.” For some, “Chinese metaphysics” may be a blatant contradictio in adiecto, while others may find it a most ordinary topic to be discussed at the beginning of the twenty-first century. In this article, I set out to examine two major discourses in which talk about “metaphysics” is frequent and popular and to which talk of “Chinese metaphysics” may wish to contribute: the history of philosophy and analytic philosophy. My contention is that it is usually far from obvious what reasons are behind putting “Chinese metaphysics” on the academic agenda and to what precise purpose this is done. What my discussion seeks to highlight is the as yet often largely unarticulated dimension of the politics of comparative philosophy—of which talk about “Chinese metaphysics” may but need not be an example.

The Classical Daoist Concept ofLI理 (Pattern) and Early Chinese Cosmology

This study traces the origins and development of the concept ofLi理 (Pattern) in early Chinese Cosmology, locating its foundation in the root metaphor derived from the natural lines or veins along which a block of jade can be split by a skilled artisan. From this relatively concrete image,licomes to eventually represent in Daoist cosmology the more abstract quality of the natural patterns or structures within the universe along which all phenomena move and interact with one another without the interference of human beings. After examining how early Confucian works emphasize the more abstract and derivative qualities of order and structure, we see that the likely Yangist authors in theLüshi chunqiureturn to the original metaphor of veins in jade but, instead, apply this to the veins through which theqicirculates through the human body.We then see how this metaphor is expanded beyond the human body in the classical Daoist texts to come to represent the natural guidelines both within all phenomena and those that guide their movements within the cosmos. Within phenomena these include such varied things as the structures for the generation and expression of emotions within human beings as well as the natural lines along which the butcher's chopper passes in order to cleave oxen. In Daoist inner cultivation literature it is these patterns with which sages accord so that their spontaneous actions are completely in harmony with the greater forces of the cosmos. Only after long practice of the apophatic contemplative methods that include concentrating on one breathing and emptying out the normal contents of consciousness can the sage be able to accomplish this goal of “taking no action yet leaving nothing undone.” Thus the concept oflias these natural guidelines comes to serve as an explanation for why this classical Daoist dictum is effective in the world.Finally, theHuainanzicontains the most sophisticated and sustained usages of the concept oflias the natural patterns and guidelines in the cosmos arguing that complying with them is the key to a genuinely contented life.

Transnational Sacralizations: When Daoist Monks meet Global Spiritual Tourists

This article examines the production of sacrality in the context of globalization, through the case of encounters between international spiritual tourists and Chinese monks. The sacred mountain of Huashan has historically been localized in the context of Daoist cosmology, Chinese imperial civilizing, socialist nation-building and, now, global capitalism. While the monks experience Huashan as a gateway for embeddedness into Daoist lineage, ritual, and cosmology, the spiritual tourists approach it as a fountain of raw, consumable energy on a path of disembedding and individuation. But encounters between the two groups lead to the mutual interference and interpenetration of both trajectories. Undermining dichotomist concepts of the sacred which define it as either essentially Other or as socially constructed and contested, the sacrality of Huashan serves as both an anchor for multiple centralizing projects and forces, and as a catalyst and node for the formation of interconnecting and expanding horizontal networks.

Poem as Proposition in the Analects: A Whiteheadian reading of a Confucian sensibility[1

I suggest that ubiquitous references made by Confucius to poetic songs in the Analects reveal an important aspect of his philosophy. This aspect involves the assumption that things in the world “resonate” with one another. Using elements of Alfred North Whitehead's thought, as well as metaphysical insights from the Han Dynasty text, Huainanzi, I first present an aesthetic theory along with a supporting cosmological vision that enhances our appreciation of this trait in the Confucian world. With these preliminaries in mind, I approach the Analects itself. I will isolate the term xing, or “stimulation “, and demonstrate how this term allows us to understand the function of poetry for the early Confucians. I conclude that poetry was thought to behave much like what Whitehead called “propositions”, and that this function assumes a world with certain basic tendencies normally associated with Daoist cosmology.

Le rôle et le sens des nombres dans la cosmologie et l'alchimie taoïstes

Role and meaning of numbers in Daoist cosmology and alchemy Isabelle Robinet supplies the reader with a considerable amount of data concerning the use of numbers in texts from the Dao zang. She shows how the numbers were used symbolically and demonstrates how arithmetical operations (representation as a sum or a product of several addends or factors) allowed numbers to connect ritual and alchemical practices with Daoist cosmology in its temporal and spatial aspects.