âDaoâ and âDaoismâ
According to chapter 16 of the Daodejing éćŸ·ç¶, attributed to the mysterious quasi-mythical âold masterâ (Laozi èć), all things arise from and return to the dao é (fuwu yunyun, ge fugui qigen 怫ç©èžèž, ććŸ©æžć
¶æ č).1 What is this dao? Most ancient and classical Chinese forms of discourse employed this word. It is an ordinary Chinese expression still in use today signifying path, road, and way. Already in antiquity, the word had a variety of specialized meanings: it could name a specific teaching or method (such as the dao of Confucius ćć or Mozi ćąšć) or could designate the ultimate reality and truth of things and the cosmos: the whole or the one beyond human discourse and understanding. The dao, according to the cosmological account in the âOriginating in Daoâ (yuandao ćé) chapter of the Huainanzi æ·źćć that heavily relies on the Daodejing, is the generative that shelters and opens, envelops and bestows, empties and fills.2
According to deep ecologist Arne NĂŠss, Daoism is a motivational ecosophy of environmental wisdom for our times.3 But what is âDaoismâ?4 Of course, every â-ismâ is a formulaic conventional expression inadequate to what it would designate. There is again no single univocal answer to this question, and the expression is at risk of being excessively inclusive or overly exclusive. On the one hand, the expression âDaoismâ is a contested multivocal term that incorporates a diverse array of ideas, practices, and texts, and reducing them to a common â-ismâ inadequately reflects the historical record. On the other hand, modern scholarly and popular conceptions of Daoism have been formed through complex relations with indigenous sources and voices, and recourse to historical and existing Daoist sources, transmissions, and practices is necessary both to contest and develop alternatives to anachronistic and ideological interpretations that impose their own constructions onto Chinese materials. The present work will repeatedly face difficulties of what a new or reimagined teaching of dao would look like under current crisis conditions, generated by human economic and social organization, and how to indirectly translate and revise early Daoist perspectives and strategies in the context of contemporary environmentalism, in particular given its investment in prescriptive, normative, and activist ways of thinking and speaking that the teaching of dao in the Daodejing and the Zhuangzi èć appears to subvert for the sake of fatalistic quietude.
Early Chinese sources are characterized by intertextual and interdiscursive references to competing teachings (such as those of Confucius and Mozi) and record arguments between their proponents. These early accounts form the basis of the subsequent classification of various schools or families of teachings (jia 柶) during the rule of Emperor Wu of Han æŒąæŠćž (who reigned from 141â87 bce) in the early Han dynasty by Sima Tan ćžéŠŹè« (c.165â110 bce) and his son the historian Sima Qian ćžéŠŹé· (c.145âc.86 bce).5 In the Historical Record (Shiji ćČèš), also called the Records of the Grand Historian (Taishigong shu ć€ȘćČć
Źæž), Sima Qian retrospectively recast (further developing his fatherâs classification of six schools) the diverse discursive forms of the Spring and Autumn (Chunqiu shidai æ„ç§æ代) and Warring States (Zhanguo shidai æ°ćæ代) periods (sixth century to 221 bce) as the âhundred schools of thoughtâ (zhuzi baijia è«žćçŸćź¶).6
The expression daojia é柶 (the lineage or family of the dao) addressed by the elder and younger Sima is not found in the Laozi, the Zhuangzi, or extant pre-Han sources.7 It was used to designate the politically-oriented form of Daoism called (combining the names of the Yellow Emperor [Huangdi é»ćž] and Laozi) Huanglao é»è, a prevailing discourse in the early Han dynasty, and, in particular, the teaching of Laozi that remained one of its primary reference points that encompassed apparently related figures such as Zhuangzi. The enigmatic figure of Laozi, who appears to be an amalgamation of personages, was already associated with visions of the functioning of the cosmos, personal self-cultivation, and the art of political rule in the Daodejing that would be taken up in Huanglao documents.
Daoism, as transmissions of the way bearing overlapping yet distinctive family resemblances, does not only designate early texts linked with the names of early great masters such as Laozi, Zhuangzi, and Liezi ćć (Lie Yukou ć犊ćŻ, c. fifth century bce), who are unlikely to be the âauthorsâ of the works traditionally attributed to them and may not have existed. Sima Qian included Laozi in the same chapter (Laozi Hanfei liezhuan èćééććł) as the âLegalistâ (fajia æłćź¶) Hanfeizi ééć (third-century bce).8 This association is not coincidental, as the text attributed to Hanfei includes the earliest surviving commentaries on the Daodejing.9 There are close connections (as well as crucial differences as discussed later) between the text ascribed to Laozi, Huanglao Daoism, and the Legalist (the teaching that identifies dao with law) discourses that focused on means of power and administrative methods.10 Significant sources for interpreting âearlyâ (or what some would rather classify as âproto-â) Daoism include eclectic excavated texts unearthed in Mawangdui 銏çć and anthologies that fused Daoist, Legalist, and also Confucian strategies of argumentation and interpretation such as the Huainanzi and the Guanzi 知ć.11
Transmissions of the dao between Religion and Philosophy
In addition to these early works composed and revised through the early Han period, lineages and transmissions of the dao can also encompass subsequent cultural, literary, philosophical, and religious movements linked to varying degrees with these sources, such as the eclectic literati of âmysterious learningâ (xuanxue çćž) active in the third and fourth centuries ce, which is controversially called âNeo-Daoism,â and so-called âreligious Daoismâ that combined these early sources with new revelations in the formation of its canon.12
The Daodejing commentary of the âmysterious learningâ thinker Wang Bi çćŒŒ (226â249) elucidated an eclectic hybrid yet still in key respects (as his Ruist critics recurrently noted) fundamentally Laozian philosophy of ânatureâ and ânothingnessâ (in their early Chinese senses of ziran and wu) with a practical ethical-political intent.13 The Warring State text âInward Trainingâ (Neiye ć
§æ„) chapter of the Guanzi anthology and the Daodejing commentary ascribed to the âriverside elderâ Heshang Gong æČłäžć
Ź in the first century ce stressed the dao as informing a biospiritual model for practices of meditation and self-cultivation as well as a biopolitical model for governing and transforming society.14 To give preliminary definitions: âbiospiritualâ means in this context techniques, practices, and models of cultivating the embodied heart-mind and the mindful body; âbiopoliticsâ signifies deploying bodily, biological, and medical language and models for governing and ordering society. Another indication of this tendency in the later Han dynasty can be found in the Laozi Inscription (Laozi ming èćé), ascribed to Bian Shao éé¶ and dated 24 September, ce 165, in which Laozi appears as a scholar and sagely teacher, a spiritualized person who has become a numinous âimmortalâ or (in a non-Western onto-theological sense) âtranscendentâ (xian ä», a character meaning person in the mountain) to the mundane world through biospiritual (practices of the experiential body), self-cultivation techniques, and as a cosmic deity embodying dao.15 The Scripture on Great Peace (Taiping Jing ć€Șćčłç¶), a late Han period text linked with peasant rebellions and the beginnings of organized religious Daoism, and the Xiangâer Commentary (Laozi Xiangâer zhu èćæłçŸæłš), a product of the late and post-Han organized theopolitical movement called the âWay of the Celestial Mastersâ (tianshi dao 怩枫é), identified Laozi as an incarnation of the most supreme Lord Lao (Taishang Laojun ć€Șäžèć).16 The vocabulary of âimmortalityâ or âtranscendence,â of becoming a spirit (shen ç„) that is sometimes described as becoming a god or âdivinizationâ (granting the differences between shen and Western conceptions of god/divinity), and the embodiment and personification of the dao in late and post-Han Daoist religious movements need to be interpreted in their early Chinese senses and contexts instead of according to how they might be conceived in Western metaphysics and onto-theology. In this context, the dao is personified in the god-like figure of Lord Lao who manifests the way and reveals the path to becoming a spiritually realized being (xian), popularly attributed with supernatural capacities, through techniques of biospiritual transformation and arts of inward alchemy (neidan shu ć
§äžčèĄ).17
These late and post-Han period developments saw the establishment of religious Daoist societies and institutions that continue to exist to this day. It would be overly narrow and misleading to regard Daoist masters and adepts (daoshi é棫) practicing dao (weidao çșé) as degenerate inheritors of a higher classical Daoism. Various critiques of âreligious Daoismâ reflect the concerns of the critics. Some aspects already emerged in Han dynasty and mysterious learning disputes over the possibility of immortality (e.g., Ji Kang ć”ćș· and Xiang Xiu ćç§) and in Buddhist and Confucian discourses during the medieval period.18 The Buddhist monk Daoan éćź (312â385) in his âEssay on the Two Teachingsâ (Erjiao lun äșæè«) and the Daoist convert to Buddhism Zhen Luan çéž (535â566) in his âLaughing at Daoismâ (Xiaodao Lun çŹéè«) polemically distinguished lineages of the âway of immortalsâ (xiandao ä»é) and âway of spiritsâ (shendao ç„é) from the higher wisdom of Laozi and Zhuangzi, which was still deemed inferior to the Buddhist dharma.19 More recently, their emphasis on âexternalâ devotional rituals and inward alchemical and biospiritual meditative techniques led generations of Western scholars, particularly those with philosophical, Protestant, and secular disenchanting sensibilities, to drastically separate an earlier purer âcontemplativeâ â...