Mortality in Traditional Chinese Thought (SUNY series in Chinese Philosophy and Culture)

Mortality

in Traditional Chinese Thought

:9>I:97NAMY OLBERDING

6C9 PHILIP J. IVANHOE

MORTALITY IN TRADITIONAL CHINESE THOUGHT

SUNY series in Chinese Philosophy and Culture ———— Roger T. Ames, editor

MORTALITY IN TRADITIONAL CHINESE THOUGHT

Edited by

AMY OLBERDING and

PHILIP J. IVANHOE

State University of New York Press

Cover image: Detail of coffin footboard, Mawangdui Tomb 1. Second century b.c.e. Photograph courtesy of Hunan Provincial Museum. Published by

State University of New York Press, Albany © 2011 State University of New York All rights reserved Printed in the United States of America No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission. No part of this book may be stored in a retrieval system or transmitted in any form or by any means including electronic, electrostatic, magnetic tape, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise without the prior permission in writing of the publisher. For information, contact State University of New York Press, Albany, NY www.sunypress.edu Production, Laurie Searl Marketing, Anne M. Valentine Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Mortality in traditional Chinese thought / [edited by] Amy Olberding and Philip J. Ivanhoe. p. cm. — (SUNY series in Chinese philosophy and culture) Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN 978-1-4384-3563-3 (hardcover : alk. paper) 1. Death. 2. Philosophy, Chinese. I. Olberding, Amy. II. Ivanhoe, P. J. B5233.D43M67 2011 128'.50951—dc22

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In Memoriam Ruby Bartley Prantl

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

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CONTENTS

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS INTRODUCTION

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CHAPTER 1 Preparation for the Afterlife in Ancient China Mu-chou Poo

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CHAPTER 2 Ascend to Heaven or Stay in the Tomb? Paintings in Mawangdui Tomb 1 and the Virtual Ritual of Revival in Second-Century B.C.E. China Eugene Y. Wang

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CHAPTER 3 Concepts of Death and the Afterlife Reflected in Newly Discovered Tomb Objects and Texts from Han China Jue Guo

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CHAPTER 4 War, Death, and Ancient Chinese Cosmology: Thinking through the Thickness of Culture Roger T. Ames

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CHAPTER 5 Death and Dying in the Analects Philip J. Ivanhoe

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CHAPTER 6 I Know Not “Seems”: Grief for Parents in the Analects Amy Olberding

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CHAPTER 7 Allotment and Death in Early China Mark Csikszentmihalyi

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CONTENTS

CHAPTER 8

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Death in the Zhuangzi: Mind, Nature, and the Art of Forgetting Mark Berkson

CHAPTER 9 Sages, the Past, and the Dead: Death in the Huainanzi Michael Puett

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CHAPTER 10 Linji and William James on Mortality: Two Visions of Pragmatism Tao Jiang

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CHAPTER 11 Death as the Ultimate Concern in the Neo-Confucian Tradition: Wang Yangming’s Followers as an Example Guoxiang Peng

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LIST OF CONTRIBUTORS

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INDEX

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ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

A work of this sort is always the product of many hands. The editors would like to acknowledge those who have helped us along the way. Kate Lawn performed an initial copyedit and provided an eye for detail that has served all of us well. Nancy Ellegate, our editor at SUNY Press, provided valuable assistance throughout the process of bringing the book to print, and Roger T. Ames, editor of SUNY’s series in Chinese Philosophy and Culture, offered generous support and advice. We are also grateful to Laurie Searl, our production editor at SUNY, for ensuring that the final stages of preparing the book proceeded smoothly, and to Rafael Chaiken, our copy editor at SUNY, for his careful work in helping all of us polish the essays into their final forms. The University of Oklahoma’s Office of Research Services and the Department of Public and Social Administration of City University of Hong Kong provided generous support for the preparation of this manuscript. We are also grateful to Bruce Tindall for preparing the index for this volume. Several images used in chapter 2 were granted for use in this volume courtesy of the Hunan Provincial Museum. The image used in chapter 3 was granted for use in this volume courtesy of Kexue chubanshe. An earlier version of Philip J. Ivanhoe’s chapter, “Death and Dying in the Analects,” appeared in Confucian Spirituality, edited by Mary Evelyn Tucker and Tu Weiming (New York: Crossroad Press, 2004).

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INTRODUCTION

Death is universal, the common fate of all human beings. Yet while all people die and the mortal condition is a foundational feature of human experience, these mere brute facts can elide the rich variety of responses to death found among individuals and societies. In responses to mortality we can see the complexity and creativity of human beings. The effort to understand death and render it manageable generates a diverse range of approaches to mortality that register what people and societies prize, as well as what they fear. The chapters in this volume consider the phenomenon of death from a variety of disciplines and perspectives and capture some of the most important and distinctive ways people in traditional China understood and responded to death. As the historian David N. Keightley has argued, death in traditional China was not the sort of problem it was in the early West.1 We do not find, for example, grand narratives of tragic heroes who realize who they really are and manifest their highest virtue in the poignant moment when they meet a violent and inevitable end. We do not find explanations of how death first entered or disrupted an earlier, happier state of the world, one in which mortality had no place or meaning. In early China, death tends to be regarded as less extraordinary and more acceptable as a natural feature of life. We do not find philosophical sentiments that readily lend themselves to the anguished existentialist formulations of mortality characteristic of certain trends in more recent Western philosophy. Even when we do discover the familiar in early Chinese responses to death, such as intimations of an afterlife in which some form of the personal self survives death to enjoy a continued existence, it is far from clear how deeply the apparent affinities reach. These different and distinctive features of Chinese responses to death make the study of Chinese views important not only for what they reveal about Chinese culture but also for what they imply for more general theories or accounts of human responses to mortality. What we do find in traditional Chinese attitudes toward and responses to death is difficult to represent in any summary fashion; this difficulty reflects not only the diverse media and forms of expression evident in Chinese culture but also the great variety of beliefs, attitudes, and practices

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found throughout the Chinese tradition. As the essays gathered here amply demonstrate, there are multiple understandings of death operating in and influencing all cultural forms in traditional China. These understandings register in diverse contexts and different forms, appearing in the physical spaces and artistic ornaments of the tomb, in ritual performances aimed at answering and addressing the sorrows of loss, in military documents that recognize war’s cost even as they counsel and guide those who would make war, and in religious and philosophical efforts to limn the conditions under which a life may flourish while simultaneously attending to the inevitability of that life’s end. The works in this volume traverse these large and unexplored territories in an effort to assay the distinctive practices and strategies used in traditional China to engage in the dramatic and familiar human effort to tame death, to render it—at least to some degree—subject to human management and understanding. Given their diversity in themes, media, theories, expressions, and practices, we forego an attempt to create any singular theoretical frame in this volume. We aim instead simply to sketch the remarkable range and richness of Chinese responses to mortality, allowing the chapters to illustrate the distinctive features and qualities of the Chinese tradition. While this study targets death as the locus of attention, it must be acknowledged that, as the Daoist philosopher Zhuangzi explicitly avers, life and death form a “single strand.” To investigate one end of this thread naturally leads one to discover and attend to the other. As a result, the strategies for managing and responding to death described in this volume are at once about life as well. Contemplating these essays, we may begin to appreciate the degree to which death can serve as a uniquely powerful lens for bringing into focus the values that structured lived experience in traditional China. When we survey phenomena as diverse as early China’s tomb culture or later Chinese Buddhist philosophical treatments of mortality, we are invited to consider just what sort of life and values these strategies illuminate, both directly as well as indirectly. We all must die, but how we or others do so casts light on what kinds of lives we most value and admire—as well as those we most loathe and detest. The various insights and unique perspectives proffered by the essays herein will refine in important ways the more general picture we have of life in traditional China. We begin this study with the most direct and yet perhaps most opaque manifestations of early Chinese attitudes toward death, the materials of the tomb. In recent decades, mortuary archaeology in China has made available a rich supply of material for investigating early Chinese attitudes toward death. Tomb excavations have provided clues and indications about the meaning of death in ancient China, and scholars have only begun to explore what the finds can tell us. We present here three studies that investigate the promise that these tombs and their contents hold for illuminating the

INTRODUCTION

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complexity of understandings and responses to mortality in early China. Individually, these chapters offer distinctive interpretive strategies for examining what China’s tombs and artifacts communicate about the dead; collectively, they demonstrate the role material culture can play in revealing heretofore unappreciated elements of early Chinese attitudes toward and responses to mortality. Mu-chou Poo’s chapter, “Preparation for the Afterlife in Ancient China,” surveys evolving conceptions of the hereafter in ancient China as evident in funerary remains. The earliest surviving tombs and grave goods, he observes, suggest that the world of the dead played an important role in preserving the hierarchical social and political realities of the living, with the noble dead enjoying burials and burial goods that befitted their lived stature. However, as China’s old hierarchies deteriorated in the increased political chaos of the Spring and Autumn and Warring States periods (770–221 B.C.E.), the organized symbols of stature in death lost force. By the Western Han (206 B.C.E.–8 C.E.), tombs came to increasingly resemble the spaces of the home, with grave goods and the tomb environment operating to simulate something like the lived spaces the dead once inhabited. Poo’s essay considers these marked changes, and he queries in particular why, given the apparent persistence of connections between pre- and postmortem existence, simulation of the home space was a relatively late development. Poo traces these changes to alterations in evolving structures of social consciousness. From the Shang to the Eastern Han, a budding interest in meritocratic individual social ascension and increasingly bureaucratized social organization produced a tomb culture and conceptions of the afterlife that reflected the changing nature of life and the experiences of the living. His analysis amply demonstrates that while preparation for the afterlife operated as something of a constant in the Chinese treatment of death, what one could expect in the afterlife shifted just as surely as did one’s lived experience. In “Ascend to Heaven or Stay in the Tomb? Paintings in Mawangdui Tomb 1 and the Virtual Ritual of Bodily Space in Second-Century-B.C.E. China,” Eugene Wang considers the potency of visual culture for revealing less widely recognized features of Chinese attitudes toward the afterlife. Despite recent efforts to explicate the material culture of the tomb in terms consonant with what ritual documents suggest about early Chinese practices, there is much that such an approach cannot adequately explain. Although the visual elements of the tomb are unambiguously arranged in the ritual performances of survivors, they do not end there but persist in an idiom in some measure independent of their initial deployment in burial activities. Wang’s chapter begins with a survey of the ritual practices long regarded as holding interpretive promise for opening the tomb’s visual space to understanding, and it culminates in a novel analysis of the painted coffins and banner of Mawangdui Tomb 1. The visual representations of the coffins and

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banner, he argues, map out the transformation of the body as part of wider cosmic transformative processes, processes that implicitly deny any separation between external and internal. The boundaries between body and space are not fixed, and the transformative process—the principal orientation of the visual and spatial arrangement of the tomb—unites the individual body with the wider cosmos. Jue Guo, in her chapter titled “Concepts of Death and the Afterlife Reflected in Newly Discovered Tomb Objects and Texts from Han China,” contests the inclination of some scholars to date the advent of Chinese conceptions of the afterlife to the arrival of Buddhism from India. While notions of the afterlife underwent marked changes under Buddhist influence, documents and objects found in Han tombs provide rich evidence of an earlier body of belief and practice regarding the postmortem existence of the dead. These beliefs and practices, moreover, do not neatly coalesce into a single vision of the afterlife but instead suggest, as Guo argues, a complexity not readily captured in existing scholarly models. One outstanding question is whether the dead were considered to reside in the tomb or journey onward to another realm. Attending in particular to a painting found in Mawangdui Tomb 1 and to gaodi 告地 (informing-the-underground) texts found at multiple sites, Guo contends that Han era Chinese neither resolved upon an answer nor apparently felt compelled to ask such questions. Instead, tomb artifacts indicate a pluralistic contentment in which diverse models of the afterlife coexisted and interacted. While the Han tombs bespeak none of the moral cast that Buddhism would bring to conceptions of the afterlife, exhibiting no concern with death as separating good from bad, they do indicate that, on the eve of Buddhism’s arrival in China, the afterlife was entertained with complex aspirations and a marked openness to a field of possibilities. Roger T. Ames’s chapter, “War, Death, and Ancient Chinese Cosmology: Thinking through the Thickness of Culture,” attends in particular to the dramatic effects of violence and warfare in shaping the correlative worldview of ancient China. Ames argues that military treatments of death provide one arena in which it is both plausible and useful to found understanding on a “thick” reading of cultural commitment. What we see in early Chinese military documents is but a particularly potent iteration of correlative thinking, an orientation in which dyadic associations operate to create a processional order wherein each dyad is brought into productive tension with its apparent “other” to form a potent harmony. The efficacy of such thinking is a significant premise of the battlefield commander. Building on the work of Li Zehou and He Bingdi, Ames observes that the militarists begin with what is the most foundational and least theoretical dyadic association informing the conduct of war: the balance of life and death. The Sunzi, for example, abjures any glorified construction of war and rejects divination. Instead, it highlights the commander’s foremost concern with matters of life

INTRODUCTION

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and death. The commander, it avers, must become an able reader of the tensions at play in the battlefield circumstance and must learn to turn his holistic vision of these to account, maximizing the forces at work to find success. In this, Ames argues, we see the way in which culturally situated cosmology takes shape under practical and urgent interests. With these reflections on the tomb and the wider cultural context in play, we turn to the self-conscious efforts of Chinese intellectuals to address the mortal condition. We begin with the early Confucians who offer influential philosophical attempts to navigate mortality through careful reflection on human flourishing and social meaning.2 While the Confucians most notably and obviously attend to the promise of ritual responses to mortality, they also, as the essays presented here demonstrate, frame ritual injunctions within broader commitments regarding the nature of a good human life, the shared dimensions of human experience, and the efficacy of self-cultivation in answering the sorrows engendered by mortality. Philip J. Ivanhoe and Amy Olberding assay the posture toward death adopted in the Analects, the earliest Confucian classic. Ivanhoe’s chapter, titled “Death and Dying in the Analects,” comprehensively surveys what this foundational text can offer regarding the joint problems of the individual’s apprehension of her own mortality and the sorrows of loss when beloved others die. In particular, Ivanhoe considers whether Kongzi’s clear concern with death and loss evidence a problematic “lack of nerve” with respect to mortality.3 As Ivanhoe observes, many contemporary perspectives on human mortality recognize that efforts to manage death, both religious and secular, achieve relief from its associated sorrows by seeking to flee earnest engagement with mortality. Where death is counted a terror and tragedy, we may seek recourse from the horror of the mortal condition through elaborate efforts to make our lives “really meaningful,” seeking purpose and structure in elaborate and often dubious cultural strategies for achieving a life judged “successful.” Ivanhoe argues that Kongzi’s position implicitly refuses to count death itself as tragic and terrifying, consequently foregoing elaborate meaning-making strategies in favor of an appreciation for the pleasures of a life shared with others. On this account, Kongzi endorses our intuitions that some deaths are indeed tragic and that death is a legitimate and important concern for any human being, but he insists that such profound and complex responses are connected to and must be located within a set of conditions for living well. Kongzi, that is, worries about death while offering a model in which certain species of concern with death are consonant with, contribute to, and even constitute aspects of a flourishing life. Amy Olberding’s chapter, “ ‘I Know Not ‘Seems’: Grief for Parents in the Analects” undertakes a close study of a particular species of death much emphasized in the Analects, the deaths of parents. The Analects rather clearly and unambiguously endorses robust grief when parents die. Yet there

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is, Olberding argues, something initially puzzling in this posture, for the deaths of parents appear to be cases of the “good death,” where life has run a generous course and death registers as a predictable conclusion. One worry thus evoked by the text’s emphasis on grieving these deaths is that where we rue even the good death, we risk tacitly endorsing the conviction that death is inherently and always bad. Indeed, we risk sanctioning the view that the mortal condition is irredeemably tragic. Olberding’s analysis aims to distinguish the Confucian prescription to grieve for parents from such an endorsement. The Analects’ interest in mourning parents, she argues, owes less to a posture toward death than it does to a devoted effort to frame individual deaths within patterns of human relationships. On this reading, the deaths of parents are uniquely disturbing because parents are uniquely central to the human being’s self-understanding and development. The Analects, she avers, thus simultaneously encourages grief for certain good deaths while abjuring any framework that would promote treating death simpliciter as tragic. In addition to capturing the philosophical reflections of Kongzi, his followers, and some of their opponents, the Analects has served throughout the course of Chinese history as an inspiration and spur to further reflection, its accounts of the sage Kongzi and his teachings seeding a robust commentarial tradition. Mark Csikszentmihalyi’s chapter, “Allotment and Death in Early China,” surveys this interpretive tradition as it struggled to navigate the dangerous and unpredictable waters between fate and human effort. In early China, Csikszentmihalyi observes, we see a marked interest in understanding why some lives are apparently “cut short,” why some individuals are denied a full span of life. Life is provided in unequal “allotments,” and discovering the logic, if any, in this was an early concern. Csikszentmihalyi’s essay focuses on the Analects’ representation of one life cut short, that of Kongzi’s beloved student Yan Yuan. We see the profound effect this untimely loss had upon Kongzi and how the commentarial tradition struggled to make sense both of this loss and of Kongzi’s response to it. In the commentaries, Csikszentmihalyi argues, we see competing narratives of this event, narratives that range from a concession that allotment is arbitrary to those that assign deep and even cosmological meaning to a life span. While the diversity of these accounts may be obscured by their common appeals to a shared terminology, their ascription of “life span” to ming, Csikszentmihalyi’s analysis reveals a tradition engaged in robust debate over the ability of human power to influence and govern death. While Confucians consistently advocated ritualized mourning as the most efficacious, ethically worthy, and aesthetically satisfying strategy for responding to mortality, their Daoist counterparts often sought to address the place of death in the context of wider natural patterns and processes. At the extreme, Daoists criticized and dismissed ritual conduct as nothing

INTRODUCTION

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more than an elaborate exercise in hypocrisy. Underlying such criticisms was a deep skepticism about the worth of formal ritual and a commitment to framing the human experience of mortality and human life in general within the larger context of nature. Nature, they suggested, achieves harmony and order by way of a continuous and balanced exchange between life and death. Human beings who apprehend this will come to see their own mortality as part of the cosmic patterns and processes that found and sustain the joy they find in life. Life and death, joy and sorrow, and all such dichotomies, then, are complementary and work together to form a harmonious natural order. In “Death in the Zhuangzi: Mind, Nature, and the Art of Forgetting,” Mark Berkson considers the therapeutic strategies offered by the early Daoist Zhuangzi. Zhuangzi’s voice is, as Berkson observes, perhaps one of the most distinctive of his or any age. Although Zhuangzi’s manner of addressing mortality—his humor, playfulness, and skepticism regarding death’s badness—may suggest an uncommon ease with mortality, there are nonetheless apparent tensions in his treatment of death that reflect the social fragmentation and instability of his age. For example, Zhuangzi counsels that one should accept death whenever it may come, yet he clearly also privileges “living out one’s years.” He recommends achieving an understanding of death embedded in natural patterns and processes, yet at least some of his sages seem to respond to death in a highly artificial fashion. Berkson’s essay steers between these tensions and proposes that they are best resolved when Zhuangzi is understood as adopting a tacit, heuristic division between recommendations for transforming people’s hearts and minds as they consider mortality and recommendations directed toward our need to understand and accord with nature. Zhuangzi seeks to soften the injurious, strong sense of self that impedes our efforts to accept our own mortality while affirmatively framing reconciliation to mortality as consonant with an achieved free accord with the operations of nature. There are, Berkson concludes, two distinct but mutually reinforcing strategies in evidence in the Zhuangzi, and both promote an exceptionally thorough ease with death. China’s funerary culture provides complex intimations of a postmortem existence, and some early Chinese intellectuals clearly sought to formalize a robust understanding of the role of the dead in shaping the conduct of the living. Michael Puett’s chapter, “Sages, the Past, and the Dead: Death in the Huainanzi,” describes one such attempt. In his consideration of this Daoist classic, Puett examines the complex justifications and motivations that informed beliefs in the existence and nature of ghosts in early China. The Huainanzi, Puett observes, at once confirms the prevalence of belief in ghosts and spirits in early China and demonstrates that there are multiple ways to believe in them. One of Puett’s most notable conclusions is that even when belief in ghosts is shared by sage and commoner, they do not

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necessarily believe in the same way or for the same reasons. The sage recognizes the commonplace trust that ghosts and spirits exist and, in some sense and measure, must be understood as sharing that trust. However, the sage markedly and emphatically lacks and disavows any fear of ghosts and spirits, seeing them instead as helpful agents for ensuring social order. Moreover, while the commoner may rightly anticipate a postmortem existence as a ghost, the sage’s understanding vouchsafes for him a different fate, a death that terminates in a state of nothingness, free of worldly cares. As Puett’s essay makes clear, the experience, understanding, and significance of death is not the same for commoner and sage. Sagely understanding promises not only a different life but also a different death. Tao Jiang’s chapter, “Linji and William James on Mortality: Two Visions of Pragmatism,” begins by observing the apparent affinities between an American pragmatist and Chan Buddhists. Both are wedded, in their own distinctive ways, to leveraging intellect and analysis in the service of practical human interests. Both seek, in some measure, to gauge and evaluate our intellectual efforts in terms of the help they offer in providing for our most immediate and important needs. Jiang explores how these pragmatic commitments influence and shape the efforts of the pragmatist William James and the Buddhist Linji as they work to address the challenge of human immortality. Despite the affinities in sensibility and intellectual orientation noted previously, Jiang argues that James and Linji offer dramatically different analyses of the concept. Where James may be understood as endorsing belief in immortality for its therapeutic and consolatory effects, Linji repudiates any such belief as a corrosive attachment that fatally undermines spiritual development. Jiang, in his essay, explores the sources of this marked divergence. He suggests that James appears at once personally ambivalent about the promise of an afterlife and intellectually committed to honoring the comfort some quite clearly find in such a belief. Linji, in contrast, is deeply suspicious and critical of the comfort promised by an anticipated afterlife, seeing it as a kind of “opiate” that clouds people’s vision and prevents them from seeing fundamental truths that are required for and constitutive of enlightenment and salvation. For Linji, the hope of enjoying an afterlife cannot be divorced from an implicit dissatisfaction with the life one currently lives. As such, belief in an afterlife functions as a spiritual attachment not different in kind from the worldly attachments that bedevil human existence, promote suffering, and prevent spiritual progress. Buddhist influence on China contributed, in part, to a renewal of Confucian interest in addressing mortality. As demonstrated in Guoxiang Peng’s chapter, “Death as the Ultimate Concern in the Neo-Confucian Tradition: Wang Yangming’s Followers as an Example,” Neo-Confucians sought both to respond to Buddhist treatments of mortality and to develop a distinctively Confucian idiom with which to frame their concerns. Peng attempts to show

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that the followers of Wang Yangming in particular developed a rich tradition of incorporating reflection on mortality into their philosophical program. Peng argues that these Neo-Confucians broke from a tradition of relative silence about death in order to restore and reinvigorate the understanding of Kongzi’s famous claim that one who does not yet understand life cannot understand death (Analects 11.12). These Neo-Confucians were certainly prompted by their Buddhist counterparts, but they were also, Peng avers, drawn to consideration of mortality by the circumstances of their lives, by the perils they faced in a frequently hostile political climate. Peng’s analysis demonstrates the influence of these experiences in addition to the influence of Buddhist discourse and also provides a positive account of Neo-Confucian efforts to attach an attitude of ease with mortality to an established program for moral self-cultivation. Human beings see processes of life and death unfolding around them all the time: plants bud, flower, wither, and die; crops geminate, sprout, mature, and are harvested; animals are born, grow, age, and perish; even the phases of the moon suggest to us the familiar process of coming into and passing out of being. Sometimes the ordinary process of life is cut short through accident, folly, or fate; in rare and often dramatic cases people choose to end their own lives, either sacrificing them for what they regard as higher values or deciding that their lives are no longer worth living. In general, though, human beings cherish life and seem capable of valuing almost any form of it. Given this tendency, the many forms and faces of death present us with distinct and elusive challenges. The chapters in this volume offer an impressive range of perspectives on how Chinese people traditionally attempted to respond to the challenges of death. The breadth and depth of their responses testify both to the remarkable creativity and richness of Chinese culture and to the strength, persistence, and omnipresence of death in human life. Our greatest difficulties often inspire our most impressive achievements, and this is surely the case in human responses to death. The effort to understand, manage, embellish, and find meaning in mortality is in one sense bound to fail, for death always has the final and decisive word. Yet in these ongoing efforts and the irrepressible hope that they express, we find some of the most revealing and poignant expressions of humanity. While this volume makes unique and unprecedented contributions to our understanding of Chinese views of mortality, it should be taken as providing only the initial words on this compelling aspect of Chinese tradition. Given the length and richness of this tradition and the limits of space, we have made a number of choices concerning focus and content that readers should keep in mind as they make use of our text. Including a number of essays that draw upon and analyze early archaeological material is clearly important for a volume such as this, because the wealth of this material

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is evident and its value beyond question. We have also focused particular attention on the Analects as the foundational text of Confucianism. Our reasons for doing so concern the profound and subtle nature of this text and its deep and enduring influence on later Chinese tradition. While the Analects surely does not represent the beginning of Chinese views on death, it does begin one of the most influential streams of thought in Chinese history, a stream from which many acolytes and critics branch yet which is too often neglected in treatments of mortality. Our focus on early archaeological material and the Analects highlights our more general emphasis on the pre-Han period and our relatively lighter coverage of the post-Han China. Given the expanse of Chinese history, some such unevenness in treatment is inevitable. Our strategy is to be more thorough in our coverage of the early period, as it sets up many of the issues that inform the later tradition, and then to provide examples of how this influence appears in representative works from the post-Han. Our two chapters on later periods treat two of the most important movements in later Chinese philosophy and religion: Buddhism and Neo-Confucianism. Since these essays are unprecedented, they do indeed encourage, if not wholly achieve, a reconsideration of premodern China when it comes to the issue of mortality. We do, though, fully recognize that there is a great deal of excellent work that remains to be done and trust that this volume will both aid and encourage such research. Amy Olberding Norman, Oklahoma Philip J. Ivanhoe Hong Kong, SAR

NOTES 1. See David N. Keightley, “Early Civilization in China: Reflections on How It Became Chinese,” in Heritage of China: Contemporary Perspectives on Chinese Civilization, ed. Paul S. Ropp (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1990). 2. Some scholars object to the idea that there was anything called “Confucianism” at this stage of Chinese history. This strikes us as an odd view that has arisen by confusing the distinction between a term and a concept. While there was not a single word designating the Confucian tradition at this point in time (the term ru surely had a much broader and unregulated sense), there was a very clear feeling among a certain group of scholars that Kongzi (Confucius) had preserved and codified a particular set of ideas, practices, and related classical texts that embodied “the Way of the former sages.” This was described as “the Way of Kongzi” and was advocated and defended against competing ways. All of this is evident in early texts such as Mengzi 3B9. If this does not represent a Confucian tradition, it is difficult

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to think of what possibly could qualify as such. Of course, this does not mean that the tradition was conceived of at this stage or in later times as a single homogenous way. Later Confucians interpreted Kongzi’s teachings in dramatically different ways and appealed to different sources of authority as grounds for their interpretations, but this general tendency is true of every tradition. 3. We use “Kongzi,” a romanized name of the “founder” of Confucianism, rather than the more familiar, latinized “Confucius.”

ONE

PREPARATION FOR THE AFTERLIFE IN ANCIENT CHINA Mu-chou Poo

How people imagine life in the hereafter, or even consider whether there is a life after death, necessarily implies a complex mechanism that seeks to balance various fundamental notions regarding the origin and nature of life, the existence of souls and deities, and the structure of the world. The interplay of these notions with the attachment to life on earth, the fear of the unknown, the uncertainty of the human condition, the despair regarding human weaknesses, and reactions to the physical and social environment created kaleidoscopic views of the afterlife in different societies. Studying how people imagined the afterlife and made preparations for it, therefore, might be a necessary step toward understanding what they believed in and how they perceived the meaning of life on earth. In ancient China, like in other societies, ideas of the afterlife changed along with sociocultural development; thus, we may expect that the material and textual expressions of such ideas also changed accordingly. Ideally, if we have a clear understanding of ancient Chinese ideas of the afterlife and how they changed, it will be relatively easy to explain the material and textual remains related to the preparation for the afterlife. However, the reality is that our understanding of the idea of the afterlife often depends upon first deciphering the meaning of material and textual evidence. Thus, a logical procedure is to examine the material remains, identify the changes, and compare these with what can be found in the textual evidence before we can claim to have a secure foundation on which to construct our understanding of the ancient Chinese view of afterlife. In the following, I will first discuss the evolution of burial styles and its religious and social implications in

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ancient China; I will then turn to the changing ideas of the afterlife as seen in the textual evidence. Finally, I will address the rituals and texts related to the preparations for an afterlife.

THE EVOLUTION OF BURIAL STYLES The most common burial style in early China, at least since the Shang dynasty, was the vertical-pit wooden-casket tomb, which refers to a tomb chamber in the shape of a vertical pit dug in the ground. Coffins and caskets were placed at the bottom of the pit and then often surrounded with carbon and clay as a means of waterproofing before being covered with earth and other material. An earth mound would usually be made aboveground, upon which trees would be planted as markers of the tomb’s location. Funerary shrines would sometimes be erected in front of the tomb.1 The use of a vertical burial pit is not only ancient but perhaps also natural for people everywhere: when one needs to hide the deceased, a most natural way to do so is to dig a pit in the ground and bury the body. What was special about the ancient Chinese case was that people developed out of this burial style a system that was designed to reflect the political and social status of the deceased. This system was much more than simply a sumptuous display of the wealth and status of the deceased, as can be found in many other ancient societies. Using several classical texts, we can reconstruct this system as it was practiced during the pre-Qin period (eighth to third centuries B.C.E.). When a Son of Heaven (an emperor) died, his burial would consist of seven layers of coffins and caskets; for a prince, five layers; for an official, three; and for a gentleman, two. In accordance with the number of his coffins and caskets, the deceased would be supplied with a certain number of funerary objects, most prominent among these being bronze vessels such as ding 鼎, gui 簋, hu 壺, he 盉, and the like. Thus, for a Son of Heaven, nine ding and eight gui would be supplied; for a prince, seven ding and six gui; for an official, five ding and four gui; and for a gentleman, three ding and two gui. Similarly, the different shapes of burial pits reflected a hierarchical order: the tomb of the Son of Heaven would contain four ramps; that of a prince, two; that of a high-ranking noble, one; and that of a gentleman, no ramp at all.2 This seemingly logical and hierarchical system probably never existed as a universal institution at any given point in history. Archaeological finds in the pre-Qin period, however, indicate that in certain periods and within certain regions, the funerary custom more or less conformed to a hierarchical order reflecting the politicosocial status of the deceased. Presumably, this was the result of a long period of evolution. Thus, it is reasonable to assume that this system represents a general consensus among the ruling class regarding burial practice at least until the end of the Spring and

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Autumn period (770–476 B.C.E.). From the Warring States period (475–221 B.C.E.) onward, as a consequence of the disintegration of the Zhou feudal system, coffins and bronze vessels gradually lost their value as indicators of a deceased person’s social and political status. This was probably not because people’s ideas about the symbolic meanings of the number of coffins and bronze vessels had changed. On the contrary, it was likely because too many upstarts in this chaotic period were anxious to join the ranks of the old nobility by appropriating funerary equipment that exceeded their original sociopolitical status. As a result, the system began to lose its differentiating force. However, this self-aggrandizing tendency still recognized coffins and funerary objects as symbols of wealth and political status. Concurrently, we see an increase in the number and variety of objects of daily use, surrogate or real, found in tombs. The meaning of this new trend will be considered, together with the changes in tomb style, in the following. When we move into the Han period, the old coffin-and-casket system fell even further into the background. The burial of Lady Dai (wife of Marquis Dai), who died around 160 B.C.E., consists of six layers of wooden coffins and caskets, which exceeded what was usually prescribed for a person of her status; that is, five layers, according to the old system. On the contrary, her husband possessed only four layers of coffins and caskets, which indicates that he was a degree below his wife, assuming that the number of coffins still had any status-symbolic meaning.3 What is remarkable is that for reasons about which one can only speculate, even in the same family the burial of the wife could be more elaborate than that of the husband. Archaeological discoveries of early Han dynasty tombs indicate that at this time there was no strictly followed burial practice that corresponded to political status in an exact way.4 Individual differences or preferences certainly played a significant role. It was also in the Han period that another significant change in funerary practice, the appearance of brick tombs, occurred. In its early form, this type of tomb was constructed with large bricks that replaced the wooden outer casket of the vertical-pit tomb. The brick tomb first appeared in the late Warring States period, although the exact reason for its appearance remains unknown.5 In the early Western Han, this burial style gradually gained acceptance, and the structure of the tomb began to develop into more complicated forms. The brick burial chamber grew larger, often containing an antechamber, some even with two side chambers serving as storage for funerary objects. Such a tomb was therefore more like an underground house for the deceased. This tendency to imitate the homes of the living was even more obvious when decorative paintings and reliefs were added to a tomb’s brick walls, similar to those that people would hang on the walls in their houses, as we know they did from written documents.6 The side chambers, if they were supplied, were often divided according to the functions they

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served: one would be symbolic of a kitchen and store kitchen utensils and foodstuffs; another would be symbolic of a carriage house and contain carriages and horses. These, of course, were mostly surrogate objects that were supplemented by figurines of various types, representing different sorts of servants who were supposed to serve the deceased in the world below. It seems that, with the emergence of brick tombs and the supply of funerary objects based on those of daily use, a life in the netherworld was conceived of in an increasingly realistic fashion. The tendency to imitate residences of the living was not only represented by the brick tombs; similar changes can also be detected within the tradition of the vertical-pit wooden-casket tombs, The earliest sign of such changes may be found in the tomb of Zeng-hou Yi 曾侯乙, dated to the early Warring States period. In this tomb, small doors were constructed in the walls of the caskets to connect different burial chambers. Although the doors were perhaps only symbolic and without any practical function, the meaning seems clear: the souls of the deceased were expected to move around in the tomb through the doors, much as they did in a house when alive.7 Thus, there is explicit material evidence for the idea that the tomb was conceived as a house for the deceased. During the late Warring States period and early Western Han dynasty, in the area of the old Chu state, some wooden-casket tombs developed into a kind of two-story structure, with doors, windows, and stairs that connected the upper and lower levels. A number of them even had pigpens in the lower level, which undoubtedly were imitations of what once could find in real houses at that time. Funerary objects such as clay models of paddies, boats, carriages, cattle, and even chickens and fish serve to further confirm this intention.8 A number of Western Han tombs that belonged to feudal kings and other nobles display a particular burial style. These consist of a wooden-casket tomb at the center with an extensive outer casket, including a corridor surrounding the inner chamber as well as an antechamber with two doors. Thus, the entire structure resembles a wooden house. Farther outside there is a thick wall of piled wood surrounding the casket burial chamber, forming a protective shield. Alternatively, the entire structure would be built with stone blocks, which was perhaps a compromise between the wooden-casket tomb and the brick tomb.9 Some kings’ tombs must have been even more expensive to build than those described previously. A good example is the tomb of the king of Zhongshan, Liu Sheng 劉勝, who was a cousin of Emperor Jing and therefore lived in a slightly later than period than Lady Dai. His rock-cut tomb, situated in Mancheng 滿城, Henan Province, was constructed in the shape of a double cross, that is, with two pairs of side chambers built along a central axis.10 The side chambers, like many brick tombs of similar structure, were each supplied with carriages, kitchen utensils, and food. A

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wooden house was built inside the main burial chamber, thus creating a practical residence for the deceased. With such structures, there should be no doubt that the tombs were meant to be the houses of the dead in a realistic sense. Rock-cut cave tombs such as Liu Sheng’s were, of course, only affordable for the most powerful kings.11 What is becoming obvious by now is that, whether looking at the traditional wooden-casket tombs, the newly developed brick tombs, or the luxurious double-cross tombs, a new trend can be seen emerging during the early Western Han period: an increasing tendency to imitate the houses of the living. This trend is significant because burial customs are usually some of the most important social conventions, and changes in such conventions represent corresponding changes in people’s mentality concerning life and death and their conceptions of the afterlife. The trend was toward creating an environment for the deceased that was similar to that of the living, which implies that people began to imagine, in a more realistic way, that the dead would lead a life similar to the one on earth. A question could be raised immediately: How did this change come about? The remains of prehistoric grave goods demonstrate the possible early existence of the idea of life after death. Thus, we cannot assume that it was only during the late Warring States period that the Chinese people began to develop the idea of a netherworld. The question is, why, in building tombs, did people not try to imitate the houses of the living until this time? Short of a definite explanation, we can only try to find an answer in the social and political changes that ensued during the transition from the Warring States period to the Qin and Han dynasties. One theory proposes that because of changes in the socioeconomic structure during the Spring and Autumn period, many formerly lower-class people rose up the social ladder. One way to mark their success was to adopt the burial customs of the upper class, which were formerly denied to them.12 Further, because of the establishment of centralized and bureaucratic governments, traditional feudal values based on class and clan were gradually being replaced by a new value system that esteemed individual achievement rather than clan background. The result of this sociopolitical change was also reflected in the fact that burial objects representing wealth and comfort in daily life, including surrogate houses, wells, cattle, and fields, gradually superseded—though did not completely replace—the hierarchical system of coffins and bronze vessels. The construction of tombs that imitate living quarters on earth, therefore, would be part of this emphasis on a material representation of a new social consciousness. As I have argued elsewhere, such an emphasis on postmortem personal wealth and comfort could only have been realized in a society that allowed and even encouraged personal achievement.13 The Warring States–Qin-Han transition period, therefore, seems to have been an ideal breeding ground for this new trend in funerary custom.

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THE CHANGING CONCEPTION OF THE AFTERLIFE The changing burial styles during the transition to the Qin and Han dynasties underscore a parallel change in the conception of the afterlife. We can safely assume that ideas of the soul and afterlife must have developed among many human societies in the prehistoric period. The fact that funerary objects were placed in graves suggests a certain kind of imagination in regard to a life after death. The earliest textual evidence from China concerning an idea of the afterlife can be found in Shang dynasty oracle-bone inscriptions. Primarily divination records, the inscriptions mention that deceased kings dwelt in heaven together with Di 帝 (the Sovereign on High). Obviously this was a very special afterlife, available only to royalty. There is thus far no textual evidence pointing to an afterlife for commoners, though burial customs continued to develop along the model of the vertical-pit woodencasket style in various degrees of elaboration for all members of society. This implies that the belief system at the time was by and large homogenous. Later, during the Warring States–Qin-Han transition when tomb styles began to change, we can detect a corresponding development in the perception of the afterlife. Inscriptions on bronze vessels in tombs of the Shang and Zhou dynasties are in general commemorative in nature: the deeds of the owners are magnified and praised. Occasionally, the “underground” is mentioned as the place where the noble will serve his lord after death. This term appears without any elaborate description, but we can surmise it must have been a common conception as the destination of the dead.14 Human sacrifice and accompanying tombs of servants and concubines witnessed at the Shang royal tombs, as well as certain later tombs, and corroborated by textual evidence from the Shijing (Book of odes; attributed to the Zhou period), indicate that for a long time people believed that deceased kings and other rulers needed the service of their servants even after death. As for what kind of existence the deceased might have led in the underworld, no direct reference helps to illuminate this conception for us. We can only surmise that this underworld must have been considered to be as hierarchical as this world, at least from the point of view of the rulers and those who served them. During the Eastern Zhou and specifically the Warring States period (i.e., eighth through third centuries B.C.E.), the relatively abundant written documents used two terms—“Yellow Spring” (huangquan 黃泉) and “Dark City” (youdu 幽都)—to represent the idea of a netherworld. “Yellow Spring” was probably a reference to underground water and was used as a metaphor for the netherworld. The Zuozhuan (ca. fifth to fourth century B.C.E.) preserves a story that has to do with this concept of Yellow Spring. The text

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reads that the Duke of Zheng was angry with his unfaithful mother and vowed never to see her again in life. Later, when he regretted his decision, he dug an underground tunnel to meet with her, so as not to break his vow.15 The expression used for the vow is “we shall not meet each other unless we both reach the Yellow Spring [i.e., the netherworld].” The underground tunnel, which most likely would have struck underground water, was obviously seen as a symbol of the netherworld. Exactly what existed in the Yellow Spring, however, is not specified in the existing evidence. The term “Dark City” first appears in the Chuci (Songs of the South), written by the famous Chu poet Qu Yuan 屈原 (ca. third century B.C.E.). In the chapter “Summoning the Soul,” which describes a soul-recalling ritual, the poet wrote: “O soul, Go not down to the City of Darkness, where the Lord Earth lies, nine-coiled, with dreadful horns on his forehead, and a great humped back and bloody thumbs, pursuing men, swift-footed: Three eyes he has in his tiger’s head, and his body is like a bull’s.”16 Here, the Dark City is ruled by Lord Earth (Tu Bo 土伯), a sinister-looking horned python. Such a description betrays a certain aversion toward the afterlife, as this Dark City was obviously not a desirable place to be for the souls of the dead. Again, little else is known about the Dark City. We are not even sure if this was a common term in the contemporary society, since it appears only in this poem, and we cannot project the literary imagination of the poet onto the whole society. A slightly later text found in a Qin dynasty tomb, in present-day Gansu Province, mentions that the dead person “lived” in his tomb, that he did not like to wear many clothes, and that he did not like the kind of food offering soaked with sauce.17 One cannot assume that the concept of the Dark City can be found here, yet it is clear that the tomb was part of the world of the dead, even his only world, since he never left his tomb. Indeed, darkness is a quality often attributed to the world of the dead. The ancient Mesopotamians believed that the world of the dead was a dark and cold place, ruled by the deities Ereshkigal and Nergal. The Jewish Sheol, also a dark place, is intimately related to the ancient Mesopotamian concept of the netherworld. The ancient Greeks also conceived of the netherworld as a gloomy place, where the souls of the dead exist in a pale and shadowy form. In ancient China, the darkness of the netherworld, or the Dark City, is a concept retained well into the Eastern Han period. As an Eastern Han funerary text states: “[The deceased] joined the long night, without seeing the sun and the stars. His soul dwelled alone, returned down to the darkness.”18 Here it seems the soul has nothing much to do in the netherworld except to exist in endless darkness. This picture of the netherworld changed considerably in the Western Han in that many details were added to the image, though not necessarily in a coherent way. Texts found in tombs dated to the second century B.C.E.

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refer to the world of the dead as simply the “underground” (dixia 地下), which was ruled by a host of bureaucrats such as the “Lord of Underworld,” “Assistant Magistrate of the Underworld,” “Assistant of the Dead,” “Retinue of the Graves,” “Minister and Magistrate of Grave Mounds,” “Commander of Ordinance for the Mounds,” “Neighborhood Head of the Gate of the Souls,” “Police of the Grave Mounds,” “Marquis of the Eastern Mound,” “Count of the Western Mound,” “Official of Underneath,” and “Head of Five of Gaoli [the netherworld].” All of these point to an underground bureaucratic society as mature as the one above, on earth. On top of this bureaucratic establishment, moreover, there was an overlord, variously known as the “Yellow Emperor” (Huangdi 黃帝), “Yellow God” (Huangshen 黃神), or “Heavenly Emperor” (Tiandi 天帝).19 It is unclear how the Heavenly Emperor would be involved in the affairs of the netherworld if heaven and the underground were separate regions. All the same, the picture of the netherworld shaped by these figures reflects what happened aboveground. Presumably, and of course from a modern point of view, the concept of a bureaucratic netherworld is only possible when the world of the living has already been bureaucratized. Evidence from the early Han might not have reflected the beginning of this bureaucratization of the netherworld, but it certainly portrays one that has all the signs of a unified empire. All that this bureaucratic netherworld implies is a kind of life that was conditioned—in what exact way we do not really know—by what one experienced on earth. This is to say, we base our interpretation on the assumption that people’s imagination of the netherworld could not exceed their own life experience, at least in its basic structure. Sometime during the late Western Han or early Eastern Han, a number of new localities emerged as the final destination for the deceased. Most important was Mount Tai, the ancient sacred mountain up which sovereigns ascended to make sacrifices to heaven for the purpose of seeking blessings. This mountain became the gathering place for the souls of the dead and was ruled by a “Lord of Mount Tai.” The appearance of Mount Tai as a residing place for souls, however, does not mean that belief in an underground netherworld, or Yellow Spring, was entirely replaced by belief in the mountain, or that people throughout the empire had given up their local traditions. The process through which Mount Tai gained its importance is obscure, but it might have had to do with the mountain’s position in the state cult. The Shujing (Book of History) mentions that the sage-king Shun once made sacrifice at Mount Tai. Another ancient tradition has it that the Yellow Emperor performed a sacrifice to heaven at Mount Tai and thereby became immortal. A number of classical texts testify that the mountain deities were worshipped by the rulers so that they could appropriate the Mandate of Heaven, thereby securing their legitimacy to rule. The

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first emperor of Qin (Qinshi Huangdi 秦始皇帝) and Emperor Wu of Han also performed the “grand ceremony” (fengshan 封禪) at Mount Tai. The sacred nature of Mount Tai was therefore well established during the early Han.20 One can only assume that the mountain’s sacredness, confirmed by tradition, was the primary basis for its becoming the final destination of the dead. Nonetheless, it is only in the Eastern Han period that we find funerary texts clearly indicating that Mount Tai had already become the abode of ghosts. One such text reads: “The living belong to the jurisdiction of Chang’an (長安) to the west; the dead belong to the jurisdiction of Mount Tai to the east.”21 Since Chang’an was the capital of the Western Han, it seems that as late as the Western Han, Mount Tai had begun to acquire the reputation of being the abode of the dead. Two small mounds below Mount Tai, Liangfu 梁甫 and Gaoli 蒿里, furthermore, became associated with this world of the dead and were often mentioned in texts of the Eastern Han and later eras. Besides textual evidence, graphic sources are also important in helping us to understand early Chinese conceptions of the afterlife. A well-known example is the silk banner discovered in the tomb of Lady Dai at Mawangdui 馬王堆.22 Despite numerous scholarly debates about the meaning and function of the banner, there is general consensus that the picture depicts a place where the deceased might travel to or live in.23 In other words, it is a depiction of the afterlife; many of the characters in the picture clearly are not of this world. Some scholars maintain that the painting should be divided into three parts: the upper part representing heaven, the middle part representing earth, and the lower part representing the netherworld. The deceased Lady Dai, who appears in the middle section, was therefore aspiring to ascend to heaven.24 However, it is also possible that the painting represents the entire world the deceased might enter after her death. The various elements or motifs in the picture, whether congruent with one another—for example, whether the theme of Chang’e’s 嫦娥 ascension to the moon should appear together with images of Fuxi 伏羲 and Nuwa 女 媧 (mythological figures said to live in different eras)—or not, represent a way to comprehend or to imagine the world of the dead. What we see in the depiction should not be interpreted as what the Han people imagined actually was there but, rather, what might have existed there according to various traditions and myths. Since banners such as this seem to be common funerary equipment at least among the elite—a similar one is found in the tomb of Lady Dai’s son25—one can surmise that the picture on the banner depicts at the very least a certain tradition about the afterlife around the Changsha area during the early Han. Moreover, the decorative themes in the T-shaped silk paintings in Mawangdui Tombs 1 and 3, and two silk paintings in Tomb 3, testify to the beginning of a new trend in Han tomb decoration, one that culminated in

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the wall paintings and reliefs that began to appear more frequently in the brick tombs of the late Western Han period. Examples can be found in the brick tomb of Bu Qianqiu 卜千秋 and the Xi’an brick tomb.26 The common themes displayed in the Mawangdui silk paintings and the Bu Qianqiu and Xi’an brick tombs, such as the sun, moon, toad, and crow; the figures of Fuxi and Nuwa, the dragon and tiger; and so on, provide a conceptually unifying feature for the transition from the vertical-pit tombs to the brick tombs. More importantly, the appearance of tomb wall decorations demonstrates in a graphic way the netherworld in which the deceased is supposed to live. The reliefs and paintings depict not only various activities in which the dead are supposed to participate but also immortals or auspicious animals, which indicate that the tomb is hardly a confined space to contain the body of the dead; instead, it is a whole new world within which the deceased could roam about at leisure.27 Such graphic representations of the netherworld may not necessarily be in total agreement with what the texts have revealed, since the texts themselves are not of one voice. Nevertheless, the representations provide us with some concrete images of how people imagined the netherworld, given the confines of their life experiences.

FUNERARY RITUALS AND TEXTS TO PRODUCE A BETTER FUTURE Besides the preparation of a tomb and all sorts of funerary objects, on the occasion of a funeral certain rituals were performed and protective spells pronounced, written down, and buried in the tomb. The specialists who could perform these rituals belonged to the class of exorcists, or wu 巫 (shamans).28 However, we know relatively little about the organization of the wu-shamans, since they did not form a coherent religious order, were scattered throughout the country, and were associated with various local traditions. Unlike the Egyptian Coffin Texts or Book of the Dead, there appears to be no commonly accepted codex of funerary ritual texts in the ancient Chinese tradition. In the case of the Shang royal funeral, certain rituals such as human and animal sacrifice can be confirmed by archaeological evidence.29 Before the burial chamber was built, dogs and humans were sacrificed and buried in the “waist pit,” on the floor of the burial pit. There is, of course, no way to tell whether the sacrificed dogs and humans were the king’s pets and close servants, but presumably this was the case since they were placed so near to the king’s body. When the burial chamber was finished and the king’s coffin was properly placed, another group of people was forced to follow the king into the underworld, presumably also with certain sacrificial ritual. Their severed heads and bodies were placed neatly on the ramps

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leading to the burial pit. Oracle-bone inscriptions mention that prisoners were often sacrificed during various rituals.30 Those sacrificed in the royal tombs, therefore, were most probably prisoners who were to become servants to the king in their next life. Since burial customs remained essentially the same during the Zhou period, we can assume that ritual preparations for burial also remained similar. The Shijing provides us with some fragments of detail. For example, a special ritual in memory of the deceased called the lishi 立尸 required the selection of a young child to be dressed up in the guise of the deceased and to receive offerings and homage before the deceased’s family members.31 The ritual itself may be explained as a form of reverence toward and commemoration of the deceased; it was mainly performed for the family members who were supposed to be present at the ritual. Moreover, during a funeral procession, a wu-shaman may have been assigned to purify the way in front of the procession using a peach-wood branch, since it was believed that peach wood possessed certain apotropaic power. This ritual implies a belief in the possible obstruction or contamination of the funeral by evil spirits. The most elaborate textual evidence concerning funerary rituals is no doubt the “Shisangli 士喪禮” (Funeral Rites for the Gentleman) section in the Yili 儀禮 (Book of Ceremonies), a collection of rituals performed during the funeral of a man of the shi 士 (gentleman) class. Let us consider one paragraph in the “Shisangli”: When he has died in the principal room of the private apartments, he is covered with the coverlet used at the smaller dressing. A man is sent to call the soul back. He uses the clothes of the russet cap suit for the purpose, sewing the skirt to the coat. Then throwing them over his left shoulder, he takes the collar and the girdle together in his left hand. He then ascends by a ladder set against the front end of the east wall, and, going up to the center of the house, faces north, and uses the clothes to invite the spirit to return to them, saying, “Ah! So-and-so, return!” this he does three times, and then throws the clothes down in front of the hall. The clothes are received in a basket, and taken up by the east steps for the clothing of the corpse. The man who went up to call back the soul descends by the back end of the west wall.32 This paragraph has been cited time and again as evidence of belief in the existence of the soul in Chinese society at the time. The Chuci also contains a chapter, titled “Zhao hun” (Summoning the Soul), which corroborates the ritual described in the Yili.33 Throughout the “Shisangli,” moreover, one finds carefully stipulated ritual actions at every step of the entire funereal process:

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Anyone who reads through these and similar passages in the Yili would be impressed with the meticulous attention paid to minute details of the ritual’s every procedure of the ritual. The steps that each participant should follow, moreover, are closely tied to his or her relationship with the deceased and correspond to his or her own social status. This concern with social status is reminiscent of Xunzi’s insight concerning the function of ritual and music: “Music is performed to unite and create unity, ritual is performed to divide and make difference.”35 The performance of rituals, according to this logic, is for the purpose of distinguishing different social statuses, since there is a built-in hierarchical structure in the performance of ritual, and different social classes would ideally be put in their proper positions in the structure. In a funeral setting, therefore, all the complex ceremonies and ritual paraphernalia were designed to show the status of the deceased person and his or her relationship with family members. People who were not family members, however, were also regulated when attending the funeral, each according to his or her own social status. Given the problem of the redaction and transmission of texts, we do not really know whether the rituals described or prescribed in the Yili were ever actually performed in history. The seemingly rigid and overly detailed descriptions might have been the collective product of numerous redactors throughout the ages. Nonetheless, we can assume that the core of the text must have represented the spirit of the social customs among the ruling elites of the Warring States period.36 Yet when we set out to investigate the actual practice, it becomes clear that what the Yili has provided us with are no more than idealized versions of rituals that might actually have been performed in society. Not only is it true that coffins and funerary objects found in tombs often do not conform to the ideal picture described in this text; texts found in archaeological excavations also inform us that there existed a variety of different local funerary rituals not mentioned by the Yili.37 One example of this variation can be seen in a group of funerary texts found in Hunan and dated to 79 C.E. Written on wooden slips, the texts record local rituals performed in connection with death and burial.38 According to the texts, when death was near, a wu-shaman would be sum-

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moned to pray and make ale and meat offerings. When the person died, the family members would implore the favor of a number of deities, including the Lord of the Hearth, the Controller of Fate, and other local deities: On the seventh month, twentieth day guiyou, command that shaman to set down dried meat slices and ale to deliver, on behalf of splendid mother Xuning, (what is stated) in the prayer for favor. The splendid man and splendid wife jointly on her behalf prayed for favor to Grandfather and Grandmother, the Venerable, the Tian (Family’s) Earth Altar, Boys who Died Young, Girls who Died Young, and the Director of the Life-mandate. Splendid mother Xuning: now the head is facing into the distance, the eyes are deep-set, the two hands are fisted. The dried meat slices and ale are set down. May living people not be encumbered with debt, may dead people not be penalized. The contract record is bright and clear.39 The Hunan texts indicate that it was local practice to record the content of the prayer and offering on wooden or bamboo slips, which were then to be buried with the deceased as a kind of contractual evidence testifying to the Heavenly Sire (Tiangong 天公) that indeed prayers and offerings had been performed on behalf of the deceased: What the splendid man and splendid wife (offered) on behalf of Xuning in the prayer for favor to the Tian (Family’s) Earth Altar. Seventh month, twelfth day yichou. Xuning’s head is facing into the distance, the eyes stare, the two hands are fisted. Below enter the Yellow Spring, [above enter Blue Heaven. What the splendid man and splendid wife (offered) on behalf of Xuning in the prayer for favor to the Tian (Family’s) Earth Altar, Xuning took it all to go to the Heaven Sire’s] place to report. May living people not be encumbered with debt, may dead people not be penalized. The contract writ is bright and clear.40 The identity of this Heavenly Sire is unclear,41 yet it is reasonable to assume that he was the local equivalent of the God on High, as even today the Southern Fukien dialect still refers to the most exalted god as “Tiangong.” The use of contractual and bureaucratic language, moreover, provides additional evidence pointing to the prevalence of the bureaucratization of the afterworld. Another point worth noticing is that, when death occurred, the deceased was referred to as ascending to Heaven and descending to the Yellow Spring at the same time. This might be a reflection of the ancient idea that when a person dies, his or her hun-soul goes up to Heaven and his or her po-soul goes down to the Yellow Spring, except here hun and po

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are not mentioned directly. Perhaps this is an indication of the uncertainty people felt about the whereabouts of the netherworld. The texts discussed previously, like the Yili, contain ceremonies designed for an “ordinary” death at home. Yet for those who died an early death—on the battlefield, for example—different funereal rituals were devised. A somewhat-obscure text found in a tomb from Jiudian 九店, Hubei Province, and dated to the late fourth century B.C.E. reads as follows: [Woe! I] dare to implore Wu Yi, the son of [illegible character/s]. You reside at the bottom of Fu Mountain and in the wilderness of Buzhou. The Emperor on High determined that because you have no occupation, he should command you to take charge of those who died by weapons. Today, so-and-so (mou 某 here refers to the deceased) wishes to eat. So-and-so (mou 某 here refers to the invocator) dares to take his [the deceased’s] wife to offer cut strips of silk, and fragrant provisions are offered for the sake of so-and-so [the deceased] at the place of Wu Yi. Your Lordship in the past has received so-and-so’s [the invocator’s] cut strips of silk and fragrant provisions. Please deign to allow so-and-so [the deceased] to come back to eat as usual.42 The main deity mentioned in the text is a certain Wu Yi 武夷, who is referred to as being charged by the Emperor on High to take care of the war dead, to enable them to return home and receive food offerings from their families. It seems that people in the region believed that those who died in war would wander in the wild before being collected by Wu Yi and sent back to their respective families to receive offerings, and, as the living hoped, thereby become content and harmless to those still alive. We do not know the geographical and chronological extent of this belief in Wu Yi. The fact that the text itself seems to be a model text (with the use of “so-and-so”) that presumably could be copied and distributed indicates that the belief had a certain popularity in local society. Besides preparing proper rituals, another task for the family members of the deceased was to prepare the burial site, often acquired through the purchase of a piece of land. Archaeological excavations of Eastern Han tombs have produced a number of contracts for the purpose of buying land for the deceased as a final resting place.43 One theory is that such land contracts were originally copies of real contracts that the family members of the deceased placed in the tomb in order to provide a legitimate claim to the land. Gradually, the contract became symbolic, as the piece of land became an imaginary space, the sellers of the land became deities or immortals, and the price became astronomical. Last but not least, the very sympathetic preparation for the afterlife

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included provisions for the deceased to pay taxes in the netherworld. A text found in an Eastern Han tomb has the following words: Today is an auspicious day. It is for no other reason but the deceased Zhang Shujing, who unfortunately died prematurely, is scheduled to descend into the grave. The Yellow God, who produced the Five Mountains, is in charge of the roster of the deceased, recalling the hun and po, and in charge of the list of the dead. The living may build a high tower; the dead returns and is buried deeply underneath. Eyebrows and beards having fallen; they drop and become dirt and dust. Now, therefore, I [the Heavenly Emperor’s messenger] present the medicine for removing poll tax and corvée conscription, so that the descendants will not die. Nine pieces of ginseng (renshen人蔘) from Shangdang substitute for the living. A man made of lead (qianren 鉛人) is intended to substitute for the dead. The soybeans and melon seeds are for the dead to pay for the taxation underneath. Hereby I issue a decree to remove the earthly evil, so that no disaster will occur. When this decree arrives, restrict the officer of the underworld and do not disturb the Zhang family again. Doubly urgent as prescribed by the laws and ordinances.44 Presumably, the spell had the magical power to transform the soybeans and melon seeds into payment for taxes in the netherworld. Moreover, there is also the fate of forced labor waiting for the deceased. The lead man, actually a small, crudely made figurine put into a clay bottle and buried in the tomb, was said to be able to perform all sorts of errands, including serving as corvée labor to substitute for the deceased. As one text has it: “Use a man made of lead to substitute for oneself. The lead man is versatile: he can grind grain and cook; he can drive a carriage and write letters. Report this to the official of the cemetery and the guard of the field. For thousands of years there should be nothing happening [to the deceased].”45 It is very likely that these figurines, after proper magical spells had been cast on them, were thought to be able to substitute for the dead and perform a number of tasks required of them in the netherworld. It is interesting to note a similarity between this lead figurine and the ushabti (or shawabty) of ancient Egypt, both of which served as substitutes for the deceased for conscription labor in the afterlife. Spells written on the ushabti also engaged the double to “answer” (which is the literal meaning of ushabti) for all the required works. The similarity between the lead man and the ushabti shows that certain facts of life may be encountered in every human society, and the relationship between the government and the governed was one among these facts.46 The longer text quoted previously was actually a protective spell aimed at securing a comfortable place for the dead in the netherworld

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and at the same time protecting the family members still on earth. Who had the power to issue this “decree,” as the spell is referred to in the text? The author of this spell is unknown but presumably belonged to the class of fangshi 方士 (magicians), an early form of Daoist priest.47 Thus, in Han China, two categories of religious personnel were involved in mediating between this world and the afterlife. The wu-shaman was responsible for the preparation and performance of sacrificial rituals, while the fangshi-magician was mainly involved in the manipulation of secret and sacred powers by producing spells and recipes, together with performing certain actions that could control various evil spirits and ghosts.

THE SUPPLY OF FUNERARY OBJECTS The Eastern Han skeptical philosopher Wang Chong once gave a vivid description of the popular mentality of his time concerning how to prepare for the afterlife: Thus ordinary people, on the one side, have these very doubtful arguments (about whether ghosts exist or not), and on the other . . . note that the dead in their tombs arise and have intercourse with sick people whose end is near. They then believe in this, and imagine that the dead are like the living. They commiserate with them, [thinking] that in their graves they are lonely, that their souls are solitary and without companions, that their tombs and mounds are closed and devoid of grain and other things. Therefore they make dummies to serve the corpses in their coffins, and fill the latter with eatables, to gratify the spirits. This custom has become so inveterate, and has gone to such lengths, that very often people will ruin their families and use up all their property for the coffins of the dead.48 Wang Chong was actually engaging in a rather old debate in the circle of ancient Chinese thinkers: What kind of burial can be considered a proper burial? To answer this question, one needs to have some idea of not only the fate of the deceased in the afterlife but also the nature of funerary objects. Regarding funerary objects, one of the key issues is the appropriateness in supplying the dead with either real or surrogate objects. Archaeological discoveries all over the world tend to confirm that early human societies usually buried objects that people could or did use when alive. The idea of surrogate funerary objects comes late, if at all, in many societies.49 In early China, the use of real objects, as well as human and animal sacrifice, was an established custom that lasted into but gradually declined during the Warring States period, perhaps never entirely disappearing from society.

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Surrogate objects, however, which appeared at least as early as the Shang dynasty, only began to flourish when the use of real objects declined. The change from real objects to surrogate ones symbolized a change in people’s perception of death and the hereafter, and it was the Confucian thinkers who first gave thought to this issue. The Liji 禮記 (Book of Rites) records a comment made by Kongzi (Confucius) about the dilemma people face when they need to choose between real objects and surrogate objects: Kongzi said, “In dealing with the dead, if we treat them as if they were entirely dead, that would show want of humanity, and should not be done; or, if we treat them as if they were entirely alive, that would show want of wisdom, and should not be done. On this account the vessels of bamboo [used in connection with the burial of the dead] are not fit for actual use; those of earthenware cannot be used to wash in; those of wood are left unfinished; the lutes are strung, but not evenly; the pan pipes are complete, but not in tune; the bells and musical stones are there, but they have no stands. They are called mingqi 明器 [spiritual vessels], as if they were spiritual agencies.50 On the one hand Kongzi finds it inhumane to treat the dead as merely dead, but on the other he thinks it unwise to treat them as still alive; thus, he favors the use of surrogate objects. On another occasion, Kongzi regarded the sacrifice of realistic objects, including human figurines, as no different from human sacrifice, which he condemned vehemently.51 Notice here that what the author of the Liji calls mingqi includes both real objects (the lute and panpipes) and surrogates (earthenware). This idea found similar expression in the Xunzi. After a description of mingqi similar to that of the passage quoted previously, Xunzi continues: [All these practices are] to indicate that these articles are not intended to be used. The articles of life (shengqi 生器) are taken to the tomb to give the impression that only the abode has changed. A selection from these belongings is made, but the whole of them is not entombed; so the form is there, but no function. A carriage is taken to the tomb and buried, but its metal and leather fittings, reins and harnesses, are not included to make clear that it is not intended for use. Both giving the impression that only the abode has changed and making clear that the funeral objects will never be used are means used to emphasize the feelings of grief at death. Thus, the articles of life (shengqi) have the proper form but not the function; the spiritual articles (mingqi) have the appearance

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Xunzi’s discussion of shengqi and mingqi elaborates on a psychological explanation of the origin of or rationale for the use of funerary objects. According to Xunzi, the burial of real objects once used by the deceased indicates a sentiment of the living that the deceased has not really departed from the world with which he or she is familiar. Yet because the deceased would never be able to use the objects again, they were made incomplete in order to show the deep grief of the living. Clearly, in this reasoning, the living did not think the dead could undertake any more activities. However, the mingqi were produced as replicas of real objects and could have only the appearances of such objects but not their functions. If the idea about funerary objects in the Liji is to be accepted—that is, they “are called mingqi, as if they were spiritual agencies”—we can only assume that the mingqi are effective only for the spirits. For Xunzi, it seems that both mingqi and shengqi are spiritual objects. Xunzi’s explanation may have reflected his own interpretation of the burial customs of his time. Yet his understanding of the meaning of the shengqi, the objects of life, as real objects that were made incomplete cannot cover the whole story. Many tombs found by archaeologists, the Mawangdui tombs for example, show that the “objects of life”—the clothes, the food, the utensils—were not “incomplete” but were functionally real objects. The use of surrogate objects presupposes a mentality that sees the netherworld as a place where the deceased lives a “spiritual” existence. Surrogate objects, as long as they carried the spirit of the real objects, would be appropriate for the dead. However, the inclusion of real food and objects of daily use—even texts—indicates an attachment to this world, though one can never deny that the real objects were at least as effective spiritually as the surrogate objects. Yet it is uncertain whether the common people who supplied funerary equipment really had the idea of shengqi and mingqi in mind or made any serious distinction between the two—remember that Kongzi did not make the distinction—or whether the consideration and choice of objects was sensibly made according to the means at their disposal. From the late Eastern Zhou to the Han and indeed throughout Chinese history, despite the admonitions uttered by generations of intellectuals who criticized extravagant funerals, people vied with one another to supply their tombs with better equipment than those of others to show their superior family fortune and prestige.53 The use of surrogate objects might have been one way to solve the economic problem for those who lacked the means to supply real and expensive objects. This, of course, does not mean that rich people did not use surrogate objects. When mingqi began to become prevalent during the Warring States period, they were mostly imitations of bronze ritual vessels, which tends to confirm the previous point: people

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who used mingqi, or surrogate ritual vessels, were inspired by the status that ritual vessels might bestow on the deceased, though they did not have the means to supply the real bronze vessels themselves. This does not mean, however, that ceremonial bronze vessels could not appear with surrogate vessels together in a tomb; the burial of King Cuo of Zhongshan provides a good example of this.54 Besides, it is impossible to bury things other than common objects of daily use; houses, wells, rice fields, animal pens, and so on can only be buried in their surrogate forms. A mixture of real objects and surrogate objects seems to have become a rule in the composition of funerary supply ever since the Warring States period. There is thus no single way for us to comprehend the origin and development of funerary objects. A socioeconomic approach would explain the use of these objects as a statement of the social and political status of the deceased and his or her family; a psychological approach would see them as expressions of the emotions of the living; a religious explanation would understand them as the result of people’s belief in the existence of the soul and the netherworld. Our evidence allows all these explanations to find their footholds, and there is no reason to doubt that they in fact touch upon different aspects of the phenomenon of preparation for the netherworld.

CONCLUSION In ancient China up until the second century C.E. (that is, before the arrival of Buddhism and before Daoism became an organized religious tradition), the idea of the afterlife circulating in society cannot be said to have had an intimate and vital relation to any “religious system”; besides the governmentsponsored state cults such as those described in the “Fengshanshu 封禪書” chapter of the Shiji, it is difficult to identify any organized religious system with a set of central tenets and an operating clergy that hinged upon the idea of an afterlife. At most the concept of an afterlife can be associated with certain seemingly disjointed beliefs, such as the belief in the “Discharger of Fate” (Siming 司命), the “Lord of the Underworld” (Dixiazhu 地下主), or the “Yellow God and the Big Dipper” (Huangshen Beidou 黃神北斗). One may say that the belief in the afterlife itself formed an independent element in ancient Chinese religious beliefs. There is almost no explicit connection between the netherworld and the cosmic order as presented in the official cults. In light of this, the preparation for an afterlife in ancient China, so far as we have investigated it here, shows the following characteristics. In terms of practical measures (that is, the physical aspect of the preparation), there is a visible change in the development of burial styles beginning in the Warring States period—from vertical pit to horizontal brick chamber; from ritual vessels to objects of daily use; from a coffin box to a chamber—and

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the appearance in tombs of paintings and reliefs that suggest a world of new life. The general trend, then, is an increasingly detailed articulation of a certain vision of a world where the deceased might continue to exist after death. What we can glean from textual evidence, moreover, testifies to a trend, also beginning in the late Warring States period, of an increasingly rich description of the many bureaucratic offices as well as the various deities with which the deceased are expected to deal in the Netherworld. Texts from different locations and time periods show that there were local traditions that may not necessarily agree with one another. Yet it is clear that with the passing of time, people gradually formulated their views of the netherworld by modeling the world they experienced on earth. It seems that by formulating a netherworld from something familiar, at least to begin with, a more secure feeling could be generated for people whose deaths are near. It would be more desirable to know what awaits after death than to be totally ignorant. Once people have some idea of what to expect in the netherworld, various measures can be implemented, as witnessed by all the funerary texts and tools. The formulation of an idea of the netherworld, therefore, is really part of the mental preparation people must undergo in order to deal with an inevitable fact of life—death. It seems that there is a close correlation between the imagination of and preparation for the afterlife and the position that the idea of the afterlife occupies in a religious tradition. When preparation for the afterlife becomes more and more extravagant, there is a corresponding elaboration on the idea of the netherworld and on the recognition of its importance. This would be amply demonstrated when Buddhism became established in China and the idea of Buddhist hell was implemented in the popular mentality. From then on, the nature of the deities or whatever divine power there was became a key factor in the formation of the idea of an afterlife. Whether divine justice will appear, and in what form, affects the imagination of the world after death. Before the arrival of Buddhism and the rise of Daoist religion, however, the acts of deities do not seem to have had any direct relationship with the implementation of justice except in correspondence with cosmic cycles; for example, those defined in texts expressing the official ideology such as the Monthly Ordinance. In accounts of the netherworld in this period, we see deities taking charge of various affairs as part of a kind of underworld bureaucracy, and we see deities invoked by the deceased or the deceased’s family members to help the deceased in various ways; however, we do not see deities actively making charges against or carrying out punishments upon the deceased because of certain moral or ethical offenses. This is somewhat perplexing since, if the imagined netherworld was modeled after the earthly world, the maintenance and implementation of justice should also be part of the picture. One explanation might be that the funerary texts found in

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tombs are basically for the purpose of helping the deceased, not to make their afterlife even more difficult than the life they had experienced on earth. Other kinds of media and measures, such as the Daoist canon, Buddhist sutras, and all their proselytizing mechanisms—which are basically nonfunerary in nature—were required to make the connection between the imagination of the netherworld and the implementation of social and moral justice on earth. The rise of the anomaly tales (zhiguai 志怪) at the end of the Han, moreover, provides ample evidence about people’s imaginations concerning the netherworld and its relationship with justice and morality.55 Thus, from what was missing in the imagination of and preparation for the netherworld, another side of the religious mentality can be constructed, for which a comparison with other religious cultures would no doubt yield some interesting revelations.

NOTES 1. Zhongshu Wang, Han Civilization (New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, 1982), 175 ff. 2. For more on burial styles, see Poo Mu-chou 蒲慕州, Muzang yu shengsi: Zhongguo gudai zongjiao zhi xingsi 墓葬與生死：中國古代宗教之省思 (Taipei: Lianjing, 1993), chap. 2. For a recent exposition of the problem of death and burial in the Qin-Han period, see Michèle Pirazzoli-T’Serstevens, “Death and the Dead: Practices and Images in the Qin and Han,” in Shang through Han (1250 BC–220 AD), part 1 of Early Chinese Religion, eds. John Lagerwey and Marc Kalinowski (Leiden: Brill, 2009), 949–1026. 3. Hunansheng bowuguan 湖南省博物館 and Zhongguo kexueyuan kaogu yanjiusuo 中國科學院考古研究所, eds., Changsha Mawangdui yihao Hanmu 長沙 馬王堆一號漢墓, 2 vols. (Peking: Wenwu, 1973); Hunansheng bowuguan 湖南 省博物館 and Hunansheng wenwu kaogu yanjiusuo 湖南省文物考古研究所, eds., Changsha Mawangdui er, san hao Hanmu 長沙馬王堆二、三號漢墓, vol. 1 (Beijing: Wenwu, 2004). 4. Poo, Muzang yu shengsi, 62–68. 5. Huang Xiaofen 黃曉芬, Hanmu de kaoguxue yanjiu 漢墓的考古學研究 (Changsha: Yuelu shushe, 2003), 41–42, 90–95. 6. See Xing Yitian 邢義田, “Handai bihua de fazhan he bihuamu 漢代壁畫的 發展和壁畫墓,” Bulletin of the Institute of History and Philology 57.1 (1986): 139–170. The wall decorations in the early brick tombs had certain affinity with and may have derived from the decorations in the vertical-pit tombs represented by the silk paintings in the Mawangdui tombs. See following discussions. 7. Hubeisheng bowuguan 湖北省博物館, Zenghou Yi mu 曾侯乙墓 (Beijing: Wenwu, 1989). 8. See Poo, Muzang yu shengsi, 121, 196–197; Huang, Hanmu de kaoguxue yanjiu, 61–69.

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9. Poo, Muzang yu shengsi, 62–68; Huang, Hanmu de kaoguxue yanjiu, 75–82. 10. Zhongguo shehui kexueyuan kaogu yanjiusuo 中國社會科學院考古研究 所 and Henansheng wenwu guanlichu 河北省文物管理處, Mancheng Hanmu fajue baogao 滿城漢墓發掘報告 (Beijing: Wenwu, 1980). 11. See Huang, Hanmu de kaoguxue yenjiu, 82–87. 12. Yu Weichao 俞偉超, “Zhoudai yongding zhidu yanjiu 周代用鼎制度研 究,” Xianqin lianghan kaoguxue lunji (Beijing: Wenwu, 1985), 62–107; Mu-chou Poo, In Search of Personal Welfare: A View of Ancient Chinese Religion (Albany: State University of New York Press, 1998), 165–167. 13. Poo, In Search of Personal Welfare, 176–177. 14. Poo, In Search of Personal Welfare, 65. 15. Zuozhuan zhushu 左傳注疏, ed. Shisanjing zhushu 十三經注疏 (reprint, Taipei: Xinwenfeng, n.d.), juan 2, p. 20; Poo, In Search of Personal Welfare, 65–66. 16. David Hawkes, Chu tzu: The Songs of the South, An Ancient Chinese Anthology (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1959), 105. 17. Donald Harper, “Resurrection in Warring States Popular Religion,” Taoist Resources 5.2 (1994): 13–28. 18. Nanyangshi bowuguan 南陽市博物館, “Nanyang faxian Donghan Xuaju muzhi huaxiangshi 南陽發現東漢許阿瞿墓誌畫像石,” Wenwu 8 (1974): 73–75. 19. See Poo, In Search of Personal Welfare, chap. 7. 20. A classic treatment of this subject is E. Chavannes, Le T’ai Chan (Paris: Ernest Leroux, 1910). See also a recent study, Liu Zenggui 劉增貴, “Handai de Taishan xinyang 漢代的泰山信仰,” Dalu zazhi 94.5 (1997): 193–205. 21. Liu, “Handai de Taishan xinyang.” 22. Hunansheng bowuguan and Zhongguo kexueyuan kaogu yanjiusuo, Changsha Mawangdui yihao Hanmu. A bibliography of studies on the tomb can be found in Hunansheng bowuguan and Hunansheng wenwu kaogu yanjiusuo, Changsha Mawangdui er, san hao Hanmu, vol. 1. 23. Ma Yong 馬雍, “Lun Changsha Mawangdui yihao Hanmu chutu bohua de mingcheng he zuoyong 論長沙馬王堆一號漢墓出土帛畫的名稱和作用,” Kaogu 2 (1973): 118–125; Michael Loewe, Ways to Paradise: The Chinese Quest for Immortality (London: George Allen and Unwin, 1979); Wu Hung, “Art in a Ritual Context: Rethinking Mawangdui,” Early China 17 (1992): 111–144. 24. See, for example, Loewe, Ways to Paradise, 34–35. Others maintain that the picture should be divided into four parts separated by the three horizontal platforms in the picture: heaven above, the underground below, and in the middle the two stages of existence of Lady Dai, her future life and her earthly one (see Wu, “Art in a Ritual Context”). This view is untenable because, compared with the painting in Tomb 3, the scene below the picture of the deceased that Wu Hung identifies as containing the body of the deceased clearly shows only offering vessels and no sign of the “body.” 25. Hunansheng bowuguan and Hunansheng wenwu kaogu yanjiusuo, Changsha Mawangdui er, san hao Hanmu, vol. 1. 26. Sun Zuoyun 孫作雲, “Loyang XiHan Bu Qianqiu mu bihua kaoshi 洛陽西漢卜千秋墓壁畫考釋,” Wenwu 6 (1977): 17–22; Shaanxisheng kaogu yanjiusuo

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陝西省考古研究所 and Xi’an Jiaotong daxue 西安交通大學, Xi’an Jiaotong daxue XiHan bihuamu 西安交通大學西漢壁畫墓 (Xi’an: Jiaotong daxue, 1991), 49–51. 27. For the various themes in Han tomb decorations, see Jean James, A Guide to the Tomb and Shrine Art of the Han Dynasty, 206 B.C.–A.D. 220 (Lewiston, N.Y.: E. Mellen Press, 1996); Kate Finsterbusch, Verzeichnis und Motivindex der Han Darstellungen, 4 vols. (Wiesbaden: Otto Harrassowitz, 1966–). 28. For the subject of Chinese shamanism and whether the term wu should be equated with “shaman,” see Lin Fu-shih 林富士, Handai de wuzhe 漢代的巫者, 2nd ed. (Taipei: Daoxiang, 2000). 29. See the following publication on the Shang royal tombs: Liang Siyong 梁思永 and Gao Quxun 高去尋, Houjiazhuang 侯家莊, 2 vols. (Taipei: Zhongyang yanjiuyuan, 1962). For a summary, see Kwang-chih Chang, Shang Civilization (New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, 1980), 114–117. 30. Huang Zhanyue 黃展岳, Zhonguo gudai de rensheng renxun 中國古代的人 牲人殉 (Beijing: Wenwu, 1990). 31. Hu Xinsheng 胡新生, “Zhoudai jisizhong de lishi li ji qi zongjiao yiyi 周 代祭祀中的立尸禮及其宗教意義,” Shijie zongjiao yanjiu 4 (1990): 14–25; Ge Yinghui 葛英會, “Shuo jisi lishi buci 說祭祀立尸卜辭,” Yindu xuekan 1 (2000): 4–8; Fang Shuxin 方述鑫, “Yinxu bucizhong suojian de shi 殷墟卜辭中所見的尸,” Kaogu yu wenwu 5 (2000): 21–24, 27. 32. Yili zhushu 儀禮注疏 ed., Shisanjing zhushu, 35:1–4; John Steele, The I-Li or Book of Etiquette and Ceremonial (London: Probsthain, 1917), 2:45. 33. Hawkes, Chu tzu, 105. 34. Yili zhushu, 35:5–6; Steele, The I-Li or Book of Etiquette and Ceremonial, 2:46–47. 35. Wang Xianqian 王先謙 annot., Xunzi jijie 荀子集解, (Taipei: Shijie shuju, 1981), 255. 36. The date of the Yili is still an unresolved issue; see William G. Boltz, “I li,” in Early Chinese Texts: A Bibliographical Guide, ed. Michael Loewe (Berkeley, Calif.: Society for the Study of Early China and Institute of East Asian Studies, 1993), 234–243. 37. A study of modern Chinese funerary customs claims that despite local variations, there is an overall, unified funerary ritual that is the result of age-old cultural homogenization. See James L. Watson, “The Structure of Chinese Funerary Rites: Elementary Forms, Ritual Sequence, and the Primacy of Performance,” in Death Ritual in Late Imperial and Modern China, ed. James L. Watson and Evelyn Rawski (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1988), 3–19. 38. Chen Songchang 陳松長, Xianggang Zhongwen daxue wenwuguan cang jiandu 香港中文大學文物館藏簡牘 (Hong Kong: Chinese University of Hong Kong, 2001). For a translation of the texts, see Donald Harper, “Contracts with the Spirit World in Han Common Religion: The Xuning Prayer and Sacrifice Documents of A.D. 79,” Cahiers d’Extrême-Asie 14 (2004): 227–267. 39. Harper, “Contracts with the Spirit World in Han Common Religion,” 243. 40. Harper, “Contracts with the Spirit World in Han Common Religion,” 239.

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41. Chen, Xianggang Zhongwen daxue wenwuguan cang jiandu, 99. 42. Hubeisheng wenwu kaogu yanjiusuo 湖北省文物考古研究所, Jiangling Jiudian Dongzhou mu 江陵九店東周墓 (Beijing: Kexiao, 1995), plate 113; see also Hubeisheng wenwu kaogu yanjiusuo 湖北省文物考古研究所 and Beijing daxue zhongwenxi 北京大學中文系, Jiudian Chujian 九店楚簡 (Beijing: Zhonghua, 2000), 13, 50; Chen Songchang 陳松長, “Zhanguo shidai bingsizhe de daoci 戰國時代兵 死者的禱辭,” Jianbo yanjiu yicong 2 (1998): 30–42; Zhou Fengwu 周鳳五, “Jiudian Chujian Gao Wu Yi chongtan 九店楚簡告武夷重探,” Zhongyang yanjiuyuan lishi yuyan yanjiusuo jikan 72.4 (2001): 943–945. 43. Ikeda On 池田溫, “Chu¯goku rekidai boken ryakko¯ 中國歷代墓券略考,” To¯ yo¯ buka kenkyu¯jo kiyo¯ 86.6 (1981): 193–278; Terry F. Kleeman, “Land Contracts and Related Documents,” in Chu¯goku no shu¯kyo¯ shiso to kagaku: Makio Ryokai festschrift. Makio Ryo¯kai hakushi sho¯ju kinen ronshu¯, eds. (Tokyo: Kokusho kanko¯kai, 1984), 1–34; Wu Tianying吳天穎, “Handai maidiquan kao 漢代買地券考,” Kaogu xuebao 1 (1982): 15–34. 44. Ikeda, “Chu¯goku rekidai boken ryakko¯,” p. 273, no. 6. 45. Ikeda, “Chu¯goku rekidai boken ryakko¯,” p. 270, no. 2. 46. For further discussion, see Mu-chou Poo, “Egyptology and Comparative Ancient History,” in Egyptology at the Dawn of the Twenty-first Century, ed. Zahi Hawass (Cairo: The American University in Cairo Press, 2003), 2:448–454. 47. See Kenneth J. DeWoskin, Doctors, Diviners, and Magicians of Ancient China: Biographies of Fang-shih (New York: Columbia University Press, 1983). 48. A. Forke, Lun Heng (New York: Paragon Book Gallery, 1962), 2:369. 49. All potteries found thus far in prehistoric tombs in Egypt have been objects of daily use: see W. M. F. Petrie and J. E. Quibell, Nagada and Ballas (London: British School of Archaeology in Egypt, 1896); M. Raphael, Prehistoric Pottery and Civilization in Egypt (New York: Pantheon Books, 1947). Similar situations can be found in ancient Mesopotamia, see “Grabbeigabe” and “Grabgefäss,” in Reallexikon der Assyriologie. Eric Ebeling, et al., eds. (Berlin and Leipzig: Walter de Gruyter, 1957–1971), 3:581–593, 605–609. 50. Liji zhushu, ed. Shisanjing zhushu 8:5–6; for the translation, cf. James Legge, The Li Ki, in The Sacred Books of the East, ed. F. Max Müller (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1885), 27:148. 51. Liji zhushu, 9:20. 52. Yang Liang, Xunzi jijie (Taipei: Shijie, 1981), 244–245; translation follows John Knoblock, Xunzi (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1994), 3:67–68, with minor changes. 53. Mu-chou Poo, “Ideas Concerning Death and Burial in Pre-Han and Han China,” Asia Major, 3rd ser., 3.2 (1990): 25–62. 54. For further discussion of this tomb and the issue of mingqi, see Wu Hung 巫鴻, “Mingqi de lilun he shijian: Zhanguo shiqi liyi meishu zhong de guannianhua qingxiang 明器的理論和實踐：戰國時期禮儀美術中的觀念化傾向,” Wenwu 6 (2006): 72–81. 55. Mu-chou Poo, “Justice, Morality, and Skepticism in Six-Dynasties Ghost Stories,” in Interpretation and Literature in Early Medieval China, eds. Alan Chan & Yuet-keung Lo (Albany: State University of New York Press, 2010), 251–71.

TWO

ASCEND TO HEAVEN OR STAY IN THE TOMB? Paintings in Mawangdui Tomb 1 and the Virtual Ritual of Revival in Second-Century B.C.E. China Eugene Y. Wang

Archaeological discoveries constantly fuel historical revisionism. The standard expositions of death culture in ancient China could no longer remain the same after the excavation of the second-century B.C.E. tombs at Mawangdui in the early 1970s.1 The astounding riches of the well-preserved burial site showcase, with material integrity and visual vivacity, an entire world of funerary culture to which early textual accounts provide only partial verbal testimonials. Not only does the cache enrich our knowledge of death in ancient China; it may also shake it up. The shake-up, however, has taken longer than expected—more than three decades and still counting. The delayed revelation is not for lack of information; on the contrary, it is the embarrassment of riches. One would think that the palpable immediacy of the artifacts would tell a straightforward story, but it does not. The artifacts in fact appear to manifest different and often seemingly conflicting impulses. Tomb 1, the burial of Marquise of Dai (died after 176 B.C.E.) says it all. The represented afterlife world exists—if divided by modes of representation—in two broad kinds of media, three-dimensional artifacts and painted surfaces; in other words, a tangible material world and a virtual space. The artifacts—household goods, furniture, entertainment pieces, and wooden statues of servants—largely spell out a self-sufficient subterraneous household 37

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(fig. 1); the painted surfaces, comprising lacquer-painted coffin panels (fig. 2) and a T-shaped pictorial banner (fig. 3), appear to chart a flight itinerary for the deceased’s soul in the netherworld, heading for the proverbial Mount Kunlun and, ultimately, heaven. The two sets of representations thus send conflicting and confusing messages to the tomb occupant, nudging her in different directions. The household setting assures her of the safe haven of this well-furnished home; the paintings beckon her to depart for greener pastures. Even for the departure scenario alone, there are conflicting directives: the painting on the coffin ushers her to the immortal Mount Kunlun, assumed to be somewhere in the west; the painted banner appears to point her to the empyrean above. To stay or to go, and whereto—those are the questions.2 The problem has been met with different proposed solutions. Some regard the tomb as a “polycentric” space where every possible accommodation for the deceased was made on different, and even conflicting, premises of the afterlife. If death entails divergent postmortem scenarios, so the theory goes, the living provided for them all.3 Others attribute the problem to our common subscription to the dubious premise of the soul’s ascent to heaven. They argue that this postmortem flight is a later Chinese aspiration, a notion that had not yet taken hold of the imagination of the common folk in the middle of the second-century B.C.E.4 Does not the shamanistic voice in the near-contemporary soul-summoning ritual urge the wandering soul to “climb not to the heaven above. For tigers and leopards guard the gates, with jaws ever ready to rend up mortal men”?5 Is not the painted banner part of—or related to—the soul-summoning ritual? If so, it surely leads the roaming soul back into the subterraneous depth of the grave for the eternal hereafter.6 So, the issue at stake is not just about the tomb furnishings per se; it is also our understanding of the Chinese view of death and its afterlife in the second-century B.C.E., a crucial transitional period. Do the paintings guide the soul to heaven? Or is there something wrong with the formulation of this question? The Mawangdui tomb registers the complicated dynamics of an image/ text problem. The tomb presents a deliberate visual program that defies any easy discursive formulation and conceptualization. We find ourselves caught in a hermeneutical circle of sorts. We want the tomb to speak for itself and extricate a new story out of it. However, our extrapolation is mired in verbal formulation. Each visual image leads to varied glossings from a variety of textual sources, none intended for this particular context. Our choice of a particular glossing of the image, which eventually results in a patchwork of citations,7 depends on a large picture we form at the outset in view of the Han notion of death. Entrenched in our received wisdom, we risk the danger of fitting the new material into the Procrustean bed of the same old storyline, thereby defeating the purpose of studying the visual material in the first place. However, without the historical bedrock of the textual sources, the visual intelligibility of the program remains an elusive matter of contention.

Figure 1. Plan of Mawangdui Tomb 1. From Hunan Provincial Museum, Zhongguo kaogu wenwu zhi mei (Beijing: Wenwu chubanshe, 1994), 148.

Figure 2. The three innermost of the set of four nesting lacquer coffins from Mawangdui Tomb 1, the tomb of the Marquise of Dai. After 168 B.C.E. Courtesy of Hunan Provincial Museum.

Figure 3. T-shaped silk painting placed on the innermost coffin of Mawangdui Tomb 1, the tomb of Marquise of Dai. After 168 B.C.E. Length 205 cm, width (top) 92 cm. Photograph courtesy of Hunan Provincial Museum.

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To many, death ritual is the key link between the tomb burial and textual records. Since care of the dead in ancient China was largely a ritual affair, the visual program of the tomb interment is considered part of the ritual process. Practically all scholars have sought to gauge the significance of the tomb furnishings by way of death rituals, especially the soul-summoning. They avail themselves with a set of key texts comprising the ancient songs of the south and classics on rites from the central plain, which constitute major sources regarding the soul-summoning and related funerary rituals. But the soul-summoning ritual, as constituted from the sources available to us, appears to be at odds with the visual program. The ritual warns of the perils of approaching heaven’s gate; the painted banner in Tomb 1 ostensibly lets the soul pass that leopard-guarded gate to the sublime empyrean of the sun and the moon. The disparity has led some to question the validity of relating the burial to the soul-summoning ritual, or at least to judiciously distinguish the symbols and paraphernalia of the soul-recalling ritual to those deployed in the funerary service.8 It certainly exacerbates the problems emerging from the materials: is the soul-summoning ritual related to the tomb furnishings at all? To what extent can death ritual shed light on burial? More significantly, if the riches of the tombs do no more than confirm what we already know about the soul-summoning ritual, what a bore and disappointment they would be! There is surely something going on beyond the soul-summoning ritual. To begin with, the difference in formal properties between the ritual and burial are notable. The ritual is a set of orchestrated actions that amount to a process in a sequential manner; the burial is an arrangement of objects in a spatial layout. This difference notwithstanding, a certain correlation is nonetheless compelling. Both sets of orchestration share a goodwill toward the postmortem welfare of the deceased in the afterlife cosmos. To this extent, they are both premised upon a view of a cosmological structure that governs their ritualistic preparation for the afterlife. A ritual logic governs both the visual programming and the ceremonial performance: one takes the form of a set of images and the other, a set of deeds. Once the living performers of the ritual are gone, we are left with the mute objects mapping out a symbolic space. An eternal virtual ritual continues, albeit in somewhat different ways. What follows is an attempt to pry open the nature of this artifacts-enacted virtual ritual. But first, a brief review of the performed ritual as backdrop is in order.

SOUL-SUMMONING AND DEATH RITUAL Our knowledge of ancient Chinese death ritual comes from three sets of sources: the ritual texts recording practices in northern China;9 the southern songs of the Warring States and Qin-Han periods; and, lastly, the ethnographic record of modern times. Together, they give us a glimpse into the ritual practice, which can be described as follows.

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Once it has been checked and confirmed that a person’s breathing has stopped, he or she is declared dead. A soul-summoning ritual immediately follows. The ritual is premised on the conviction that upon a person’s death, his soul leaves his body and wanders abroad. The living make an effort to call back the wandering soul. A ritual specialist climbs to the rooftop from the east and proceeds to its middle. Facing north, he shouts, “come back, so-and-so [the name of the deceased]” while waving a garment of the deceased. He then throws down the clothes to the front of the house, where they are received in a garment basket. The soul caller descends from the rooftop from the north. The dead person’s clothes are then used to cover his corpse. Food (dry meat and jam) and wine are placed on the east side of the corpse, and curtains are drawn in the hall. A banner made out of pieces of black and red cloth,10 on which is inscribed “so-and-so’s body (jiu 柩),” is hoisted on a three-foot-long bamboo post on the terrace west of the house. A ritual specialist (shangzhu 商祝) dresses the corpse in layers of clothes worn by the deceased person in his lifetime and the outfit specially made for the funerary occasion; the specialist then ties the body with ribbons. Vessels containing sacrificial animal meat are arrayed outside the bedroom. A geomantic augur (shi 筮) surveys and determines “the netherworld residence” (youyu 幽宅) for the deceased to make sure that he encounters no hardship in the afterlife. A diviner (buren 卜人) scorches a turtle shell and scrutinizes the resulting pattern to determine the whereabouts of the wandering soul. An auspicious day is chosen for the burial. On that day, the body is placed in the coffin and lowered into the grave. Two baskets of cooked millet are placed respectively at the head and rear ends of the coffin, which is then covered with wood and sealed with mud. The “spirit articles” are arranged from the south to the north.11 The southern songs register more specifically the program of the soulsummoning ritual. The procedure involves a master of dreams (zhangmeng 掌夢), who divines the condition or whereabouts of the soul, and a shaman, who specializes in recalling the soul. The shaman does this by incantation, addressing the soul directly: “O soul, come back! Why have you left your old abode and sped to the earth’s far corners, / Deserting the place of your delight to meet all those things of evil omen?” The soul-summoner then paints, through rhetorical devices of enumeration and persuasion, a terrifying verbal picture of the horrors awaiting the wandering soul in all quarters of the cosmos. The east, peopled by giants who catch the soul for game, is a land scorched by ten flaming suns that melt metal and dissolve stone. The south is owned by the people with tattooed faces and blackened teeth who sacrifice human flesh and pound human bones to paste; it is a place teeming with speedy foxes and nine-headed coiling serpents who relish the taste of human heart. The west presents just as much peril: the moving sand, the “Thunder’s Chasm,” the vast, dry, and barren desert, the elephant-sized red ants, and the gourdlike wasps. The north presents a chilling prospect of

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layered ice and endless sheets of snowflakes. The “heaven above” does not seem to be any better: the tigers and leopards guarding heaven’s gate can harm human beings, not to mention the nine-headed monster that can uproot thousands of trees and the werewolves given to throwing humans into an abyss. Nor does the “Land of Darkness” underground offer a safe haven: the triple-eyed and bovine-bodied “Earth God,” with its tiger’s head, sharp horns, and bloody claws, is surely a menace.12 The shaman then contrasts the horrors of the outside world with the comfort of the domestic abode. He tries to coax the wandering soul back through the city gate and to its old home. Then, he lays out in elaborate detail the architectural splendor, the exquisite furnishing, the charm of young female beauties, the lavish banquet, the enticing dance and music, and the liubo 六博 game—all in an attempt to lure the nomadic soul home.13 The soul-summoning ritual as recorded in ethnographic observations bears a strikingly similar rhetorical structure of enumerating the dangers of all regions of the universe and pleading with the wandering soul to return to its previous home.14 Granted, the differences among the sources are self-apparent. The classical ritual texts are methodic, fastidious, and exclusively anchored in this world with special attention to the careful mortuary procedures. The southern songs are passionate and imaginative, reaching all quarters of the universe. It is hard to determine whether it is the variations between the north and south regional traditions or the distinct generic dispositions (i.e., ritual how-to manuals vs. lyrical songs) that account for the different impressions we gain from the two sets of texts. More likely it is the formal requirements of the genre that predispose the songs to do what they are supposed to do. In any case, the two sources combine to give us a larger picture of the practice of death ritual in early China. What these sources have in common is a premise about the structure of the postmortem world divided into two spaces: the numinous space in which the out-of-body wandering soul roams, and the immediate physical surrounding of the dead body that needs care. The classical ritual texts, for all their fastidious worldly care, still affirm the need for soul-summoning and pay special attention to directions: mourners are required to do this or that toward the north or northwest, depending on the specific procedures. In this regard, the death ritual revealed in the ceremonial texts aligns itself with the southern songs that emphatically map out imaginary quarters. They both call attention to—and acknowledge—the space out there, away from our world. The southern songs, for all their far-roaming imagination, urge the wandering soul to return to the familiar world to enjoy the pleasures of the household. In doing so, they align themselves with the this-world anchorage of the classical ritual texts. Add the Mawangdui tombs to this state of affairs, and the result is both enriching and unsettling. For those unsatisfied with the verbal picture presented in the texts, the tombs provide additional pieces of the jigsaw puzzle. For

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those ensconced in the knowledge of death ritual in ancient China derived from textual sources, the palpable physical tombs present hard evidence pointing to unknown dimensions. It soon becomes apparent that we can find resonances of the texts cited previously in the material arrangement of the tomb furnishings. Meanwhile, disparities are just as—if not more—notable. The real question concerns what to make of the disparities. Are they of our own making, that is, our failure to understand the structure of experience behind the death ritual? There is, first of all, the question of why we need to relate the ritual to the tomb furnishings. The obvious answer is that we want to understand the line of thought behind the funerary culture of which both death ritual and burial are manifestations. Granted, ritual and art have different, incommensurable formal properties. Ritual, as mentioned previously, is a set of actions; art is a set of visual forms. One unfolds sequentially and procedurally in time, the other eternally laid out in—and mapping out—space. Where they intersect and interpenetrate is, first, the fact that visual images are deployed and embedded in the ritual process. Then, in addition to their shared context of care of the dead, both presuppose a certain postmortem condition of the deceased individual (wandering spirit, etc.) and a structure of the imaginary universe of the afterlife to be inhabited by the deceased’s spirit; both make preparations in anticipation of an alternative reality awaiting the dead. This shared premise bridges the gap between the two forms of cultural expression and allows ritual itself to be a mapping device and art to be a special order of experience. Moreover, the correlations between ritual and art call attention to the modes of address involved in two formal devices. The soul-summoning ritual, for instance, achieves its effect by way of painting terrifying verbal pictures, enticing, pleading, and repeating. These modalities of addressing the spirit do not translate easily into the painted images and made objects. However, to the extent that ritual and art cohere in the mortuary context and that art is part of the ritual, it pays to keep these modalities in mind when we consider the overtones of the images: are they doing the same thing?

THE PAINTED BANNER A number of traits in the physical disposition of the deceased’s body resonate with the ritual prescription. The use of an “eye kerchief” (mimu 幎目) to cover the deceased’s face,15 the layered wrappings of the corpse, and the use of silk string to fasten the arms are among the ritually prescribed treatments that materialized in the actual burial.16 The physical features of the painted banner covering the innermost coffin in the tomb, in particular, harmonize with aspects of the soul-summing ritual. The assemblage of three silk pieces—two “arms” attached to one long “trunk”—results in an ostensible T-shape, which strongly suggests a symbolic garment. The “fei-garment” (feiyi 非衣) mentioned in the tomb inventory confirms our sartorial impression.17

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(To recall, the deceased’s garment is used in the soul-summoning ritual to call back the wandering spirit.18) The stick hanger at the top of the banner suggests that the T-shaped painting (fig. 3) had been lofted or hung somewhere, presumably in some part of the ritual process. More importantly, the painting appears to have been intended as more than just a stage prop for one-time use during a ritual performance. The 205centimeter-long banner covering the inner coffin was apparently designed to approximate the latter’s length of 202 centimeters.19 The close fit suggests that the painting was an integral part of the coffin complex and that its symbolic function was tied to the coffin, whose primary significance resided in the netherworld. The painting was doing something down there in the grave. The pictorial evidence internal to the banner testifies to this point. It sounds odd to speak of the inanimate object in human terms. This vocabulary is in part compelled by the hermeneutical challenge inherent to the situation of dealing with an ancient burial circumscribed by the dearth of contextual information. Presently, there is no way of knowing now who designed the banner. Even if we had information about the artisan who executed the painting, it would still be wide of the mark to regard him as the sole agency responsible for the conceptual scheme underlying the design. Larger cultural forces, conventions, and habits inform an individual artisan’s execution. Much of the intelligence and thought process that went into the composition are discernible on the basis of the internal pictorial evidence, provided that we are observant enough. The agency of the painting appears pointedly salient if we gauge the compositional decisions against prevalent notions and conventions current in second-century B.C.E. China. The painting has been the focus of much contention since its discovery. Over the years, the attention has shifted from scattered iconographic identification of its specific images to more fundamental questions. There is a shared premise that the painted banner fulfills the symbolic function of a road map for the deceased’s soul (hun 魂) in its fumbling and faring in the numinous realm. Questions remain concerning where the banner directs the soul. For some time, the majority opinion maintained that the painting guides the flight of the deceased’s soul to heaven.20 Since then, revisionism has emerged to cast doubt on this received wisdom. Some argue that the idea of the soul’s ascent had not yet gained currency in the middle of the second century B.C.E. Instead, the painting more likely beckons the soul to return to the underground home.21 Accordingly, the placement of the painted banner on the innermost coffin underground is explained in this light. Although this revisionist view gains ground in some ways, it loses in others. The theory obviously comes up short of accounting for the force of the painting, which does show an ascent, led by soaring dragons and other creatures, culminating at the celestial sphere. To explain this, an ingenious solution proposes that the entire pictorial space—ranging from earth to heaven—pertains to the numinous realm of death, with its own sun and moon.22 While this

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suggestion leaves too many loose ends, its merit rests on the insight that we treat the fictive space pictured on the banner as something other than physical space. Taking this insight as a cue, we may further reconsider the nature of this pictorial space. The painting certainly depicts a cosmos encompassing heaven and the underworld. However, keeping in mind the entangled body/space conception governing the painted coffins, we soon realize that our problem with the painting stems from the formulation of the question, that is, does the painted banner guide the soul to heaven or summon it to the underworld? Neither “heaven,” “underworld,” nor “soul” is an absolute entity in second-century B.C.E. thinking. These notions need to be revised before they qualify as significant pieces to the jigsaw puzzle. With this kind of body-as-space and space-as-body interplay on the lacquer coffins in mind, we may need to posit a different kind of cosmos here as well. The composition on the painted banner (fig. 3) is divided into four sections. From the bottom up, they are as follows: (1) the underworld, whose upper limit is defined by a platform upheld by a giant Atlas-like figure (fig. 4); (2) the human world, between the previously mentioned platform and

Figure 4. Bottom section of the painted banner placed on the innermost coffin of Mawangdui Tomb 1. After 168 B.C.E. Photograph courtesy of Hunan Provincial Museum.

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the jade disc with intertwining dragon bodies weaving through it (fig. 4); (3) the in-between space (probably the Hanging Garden associated with the sacred Mt. Kunlun), between the jade disc and the canopy (fig. 5); and (4) heaven, whose entrance is defined by a pair of inverted T-shaped devices and guarded by two gate-of-heaven porters in official robes (fig. 6). The tomb occupant, leaning on a staff and attended by a group on either side,23 is positioned between heaven and earth (fig. 5). The event in the human world (fig. 4) is relatively easy to ascertain. The array of vessels and the attention of the deferential figures focused on the pots on the table indicate that a ritual offering is taking place. A significant detail is the object with a rounded top, borne on a pair of carrying poles, which appears to be a garment box.24 The resemblance of its decorative pattern to that of the robe of the deceased in the middle section at least establishes its affinity with the deceased, thereby indicating the focus of the ritual offering. Everything about the scene suggests the living’s

Figure 5. Middle section of the painted banner placed on the innermost coffin of Mawangdui Tomb 1. Photograph courtesy of Hunan Provincial Museum.

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Figure 6. Top section of the painted banner placed on the innermost coffin of Mawangdui Tomb 1. Second century B.C.E. Photograph courtesy of Hunan Provincial Museum.

mourning rite. That much seems clear. The remaining matter of contention is what we make of the underworld below, the heaven above, and the traffic in between. To begin with, the painting gives an interesting twist to the conventional postmortem scenario. At the outset, the early Han binary opposition of heaven/spirit and earth/body appears to provide a neat conceptual scheme to account for the composition. Human existence stems, according to a classical second-century B.C.E. formulation, from the interplay of the yin and yang divinities, which congeals into the human organism. Heaven endows it with “essential spirit” (jingshen 精神), and earth supplies it with “bodily form” (xingti 形體). Upon death, one’s “spirit enters the gate of heaven and the bodily remains return to its ground (jingshen ru qi men, er guhai fan qi gen 精神入其門, 而骨骸反其根).”25 The pictorial composition appears to largely correspond with this binary state.26 The spirit soars into heaven’s gate, and, presumably, the bodily form delves into the underworld—except that the second half of the equation is not quite there in the picture. The neat scheme founders in the underworld as presented in the painting. There is no hint whatsoever of the deceased’s bodily form settling for eternity in the underworld. The rather distinct disposition and ambience of

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the underworld also stand in sharp contrast with its traditional portrait. A third-century B.C.E. poet paints a horrifying picture of this place: O soul, come back! Go not down to the Land of Darkness, Where the Earth God lies, nine-coiled, with dreadful horns on his forehead, And a great humped back and bloody thumbs, pursuing men, swift-footed: Three eyes he has in his tiger’s head, and his body is like a bull’s. O soul, come back! Lest you bring on yourself disaster.27 The painting has no use for such a horror; its underworld is cast in a different mood. The Earth God’s double images (that is, the pair of horned blue quadrupeds standing on fish tails) are sidelined and hardly intimidating. They are in fact cheerful sidekicks to a prominent pot-bellied squatting figure at the bottom center presiding over two pairs of conjugating aquatic creatures. Between his parted legs is a blue fish overlaying a red serpent; below that is a pair of fishes whose snouts are ostensibly marked blue and red—yin and yang—joyfully intertwining their tails in copulation.28 The presiding figure can be identified as “the Grand One” (Taiyi 太一). The ancient text on Chu bamboo slips from Guodian presents him as a procreative god who resides in water and generates yin and yang forces whose interplay spawns the four seasons and thus cosmic movement.29 The silk painting in Mawangdui Tomb 3 amounts to a diagram of this cosmic process of generation (fig. 7). The accompanying inscription identifies the top-center figure as the Grand One. With his legs symbolically spread apart, the deity presides over cosmic creation and generation. At the bottom is the meeting of a pair of dragons, respectively in dark (yin) and bright (yang) colors. Their interplay generates the ascending force of a yin creature (the dark-colored lizardlike dragon) holding the sun (yang),30 signifying a consummate state of spiritual illumination. As a result, four figures—the “Four Seasons” or “Four Quarters”—spread out horizontally, completing the cosmic picture. The inscribed character she 社 (altar) indicates the locus for the offering to divinity and festival occasion of yin/yang (nature) and male/female (culture) copulation.31 The T-shaped banner in Tomb 1 replays with a vengeance this scenario of yin/yang intercourse. The squatting figure with parted legs, similar to the Grand One in the silk painting from Tomb 3, likewise hosts the copulation of aquatic creatures in the initial stage of generating yin/yang forces (fig. 4). The Mawangdui medical literature confirms one’s intuitive grasp of the entangled fishes as a veiled visual euphemism of joyful copulation. “Conjoining yin and yang” specifically alludes to sexual intercourse,32 which in turn leads to procreation and rebirth.33

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Figure 7. The Grand One and the Four Seasons. Excavated from Mawangdui Tomb 3. Ca. 168 B.C.E. Painting on silk. Height 43.5 cm; width 45 cm. Photograph courtesy of Hunan Provincial Museum.

Just as significant is the squatting giant himself. Interweaving between his parted legs are—yin and yang again—a red serpent overlaid with a blue fry (fig. 4). While not identical in referents, the giant’s squatting posture closely resembles that of a figure in the illustrated Book of the Generation of the Fetus (Taichan shu 胎產圖) from Mawangdui Tomb 3 (fig. 8).34 Signifying a newborn baby, the squatting figure in this book’s illustration serves as a diagram for prognostication of the newborn child’s fortune.35 Its association with procreation is suggestive and, indeed, illuminating about its counterpart in the Mawangdui Tomb 1 painting (fig. 4). It is no coincidence that this similarly posed figure in the Tomb 1 painting pertains just as well to birth or rebirth. The serpent/fish overlay ostensibly recalls the scene painted on

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Figure 8. Human diagram. Drawing after the polychrome picture to the upper right of the “Taichan shu” 胎產書 manuscript from Mawangdui Tomb 1. From Mawangdui Hanmu boshu 馬王堆漢墓帛書, ed. Mawangdui Hanmu boshu zhengli xiaozu 馬王堆漢墓帛書整理小組 (Beijing: Wenwu, 1985), vol. 4, p. 133.

the lid of the dark-ground coffin. There, a series of bird-fighting-serpent vignettes offsets and highlights the singularity of a bird-carrying-fish scene (fig. 15). As noted previously, early texts characterize the serpent-turningfish transformation as a symbolic process attending the “re-awakening” (fusu 復蘇) or revival of life.36 Since the theme here pertains to death and rebirth, let us turn to Mawangdui medical manuscripts for the period conceptualization of the matter. The manuscripts frequently mention life and death and ways of “exiting from death and entering into life (chu si ru sheng 出死入生).”37 What is most striking is that “death” in the Mawangdui literature is rarely treated as a categorically absolute state in the sense of the cessation of all life function of the human organism. Rather, enmeshed in the giveand-take parsing with regard to “life,” “death” breaks down into varying degrees of loss and deficiency in vitalizing elements, that is, yin and yang vapors and even phallic vigor. “To exit from death” (chu si 出死) may in fact mean expelling the stale or deadening air stored in one’s body.38 “To raise the dead” (qi si 起死) may specifically denote the restoration of penile erection.39 Since death is rarely treated as irrevocable and terminal, there is always the hope of turning it around, that is, “exiting from death

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and entering into life.” It is conceivable that some kind of line may have been drawn between the ambiguous physiological “death” in the medical literature and the brute reality of the marquise’s biological death. It is just as conceivable that, in the care of her death, the symbolic means and ritual procedures whereby the living made token efforts to revive her must have followed the same premise underlying the vitalizing macrobiotic hygiene described in the Mawangdui manuscript (or else there would have been no need to inter these manuscripts in the tomb of the marquise’s son). To sustain life and prevent death, according to the medical literature, it is essential that yin and yang vapors are kept in good supply and continually replenished when deficient. To this end, one is advised to practice dietetics, breath cultivation, and “conjoining yin and yang” (i.e., sexual intercourse), also called “coitus with yin” (jie yin 接陰) and “conjoining vapors” (he qi 合氣).40 For the living handling the marquise’s death, therefore, these are the necessary components of the symbolic means of reviving her life. Such is not to say that the painting illustrates the Mawangdui sex manual, nor does it picture the deceased’s sexual activity. Rather, “conjoining yin and yang” as an abstract phrase comes down primarily to sexual intercourse. Premised on the union of opposite forces in the cosmos, the metaphor inevitably and inextricably brings the cosmic interplay into the topography of the body. To the extent that the painting amounts to a symbolic means of reviving the deceased’s life, it has no other visual vocabulary than these tropes. The owl-on-turtle images (fig. 4), which have befuddled scholars, thus make sense in this context. The underworld, a phase of darkness signified by its slimy denizens (fishes and a serpent), is bracketed by a pair of turtles, each carrying an owl on its back. The owl/turtle images mark points of solar movement. In ancient China, the sun’s movement was envisioned as following a cyclical course. Sunset means the solar descent into an abyss in the west where the sun goes through a dark watery phase.41 The solar bird, or bird-in-the-sun, accordingly turns, in its nocturnal phase, into an owl. The turtle serves as the vehicle that transports the sun during its subterraneous journey from the western extremity to the eastern horizon for it to rise again. Thus, the turtle on the right is shown unattached to land (i.e., at the beginning of submersion into the watery underworld), signaling sunset and dusk; the turtle on the left is climbing into the human world, thereby signifying the dawn and sunrise. The cloud pattern the turtles carry in their beaks, signifying vapor, is notable. The images recapitulate the yin/yang theme that starts at the bottom of the painting. For revival of life, according to the Mawangdui medical literature, it is essential that one replenish stale yin/yang vapors in the body by practicing breath cultivation. Dusk and dawn are the most significant moments for this exercise. The breathing at dusk exhales the stale vapor (“death”); the breathing at dawn inhales the fresh vapor (“life”).42

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The rhythm makes it possible to exit from death and enter into life. Breath cultivation is also related to sexual hygiene—both activities are premised on the need for replenishment of yin/yang vapors. So, we may understand the owl/turtle images as marking the moments—dusk and dawn—of renewing these vapors, through breath, sexual cultivation, or both. The process of conjoining yin and yang vapors is continued by acts described in Mawangdui medical literature in the metaphorical language of nourishment. One is advised to “empty [one’s] five depots (wucang 五臧[藏])” to make room for the arrival of the “dark winepot” (xuanzun 玄尊), out of which one “sucks” and drinks the “heavenly beverage.” This may allude to anything from the breath cultivation involving the accumulation of saliva to the sexual cultivation involving “drenching the yang blaze” (i.e., penis) in the “yin water” (vaginal discharge).43 In any case, the macrobiotic hygiene practice here creates a situation in which “drink and food enter the body as guests (yin shi bin ti 飲食賓體),” and the ingestion of the “spirit vapor” allows one to “penetrate the spiritual illumination (tong yu shen ming 通於神明).”44 The description of this process puts the humanworld scene in the painting—long regarded as representing a sacrificial offering to the deceased—in a new light. Even if we refrain from making too much of the five vessels (i.e., that they may hint at the Five Viscera), the much-touted “numinous winepot” and the “drink and food” that supply the “spirit vapor” mentioned in the medical literature are all too suggestive. Their bearing on the scene of vessels (fig. 4) ought not be lost on us. A revitalization regimen aimed at resurrecting the dead thus underlies the successive scenes in the painting. Read upwards from the bottom, the copulation of the red and blue fish signifies the initial phase of “yin/yang conjugation.” The force of this union is continued by the paired dragons, also in red and blue. The yin and yang forces are thus set in motion. The next stage is the replenishment and nourishing of the vital breath. It is for good reasons that the food and drinks are aligned with the pair of owl/turtle images (i.e., dusk and dawn as moments of replenishing yin/yang vapors), and that they bring the red and white dragons closer together (fig. 4), or “conjoin the yin/yang.” The assortment of heterogeneous images comes together in a coherent regimen in light of the following instruction on the macrobiotic hygiene practice of “joining vapors” (i.e., sexual cultivation) in a Mawangdui manuscript: Suck in the spirit mist; drink that heavenly beverage. Bring it to the five depots, with the aim of storing it deeply. Perform dragon breathing at dawn; the vapor and form, then, become hard . . . near water. Essence and vapor are congealed, hardy, and long lasting. Spirit harmony is obtained inside; ethereal-spirit and earthly-spirit are gleaming. The five depots become firm and white, their jade

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This passage well casts the vessels (containing “heavenly beverage”) and the dragons and the owl/turtles (“performing dragon breathing at dawn”). The “heavenly beverage,” following Harper, may refer to the vitalizing fluids, simultaneously generated products of sexual cultivation in combination with breath cultivation.46 The “dragon breathing” (longxi 龍息), a measured breathing that leads to the firming of “vapor and form,” apparently indicates a controlled breath-cum-sexual cultivation at dawn. We begin to see the symbolic act referenced by the configuration of the dragons and owl/turtle images, in particular, the cloud pattern (“vapor”) held so ostensibly close to the wine and food vessels. Revitalization regimens such as breath cultivation at dawn and dusk and dietetics (that is, the intake of wine and food laid out in the offering scene centered on a table) are among the means of nourishing the vital breath, allowing the so-called dragon breath to form and soar.47 The facing pair of half-human, half-bird hybrids—wind lords of spring—signify the arrival of a new season and the promise of life.48 The revival of life in the early Chinese schematic concept is not primarily a somatic phenomenon; it occurs instead in a cosmic framework. The turbulent heaven-earth interplay crystallizes into some “culminant essence” (zhi jing 至精), cosmic exudates of sorts, which informs human life as well. Once the “essence” enters the human body—through proper breath cultivation and other means—it could accumulate, under proper care, into a critical mass known as the “concentration of essence,” thereby connecting to “spiritual illumination” (shen ming 神明), a form of cosmic consciousness and intelligence.49 One way of concentrating the essence is through the use of the so-called jade closure (yubi 玉閉) to prevent the vapor and essence from leaking out while admitting the arrival of the “spirit illumination”: The procedure for living long is to carefully employ the jade closure. When at the right times the jade closure enfolds, spirit illumination arrives and accumulates. Accumulating, it invariably manifests radiance. When the jade closure firms the essence, this invariably ensures that the jade wellspring is not upset. Then the hundred ailments do not occur; thus you can live long.50 What precisely this magical “jade closure” is remains a point of contention in modern exegeses. It could mean either “a physiological metaphor designating a place inside the body where vapor and essence are enclosed” or “the act of ‘enclosing vapor/essence,’ ” “the technique of either holding the breath or enclosing vapor,”51 or simply a means of controlling ejaculation in sexual cultivation.52 The referential ambiguity notwithstanding, its visual representation is more readily identifiable. The jade disc (yubi 玉壁), a round, flat

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piece of jade frequently found in ancient burials, may well be the symbolic artifact embodying the notion of the proverbial “jade closure” (yubi 玉閉); the circular shape of the enclosing form and its homonymic status lend credence to the connection. While the object has been explicated in general terms—described as a conduit between heaven and earth, for example—the Mawangdui medical literature provides us with a more precise exposition of its function: it is a symbolic device to enclose the essence and vapor while providing a channel for the arrival of spirit illumination. The jade closure is certainly pressed into service in the decorative program of the Mawangdui tomb. On the Tomb 1 banner, the goumang birds converge on a jade disc—the jade closure—above (fig. 4). Its symbolic function is to “firm the essence” while allowing for the arrival and accumulation of spiritual illumination. More specifically, in the parlance of sexual cultivation, it simply means the control of ejaculation. The disc either embodies the physiological act of “jade closure” or visualizes the phrase “jade hole” (yudou 玉竇),53 a veiled reference to the vagina in Mawangdui medical literature. In any case, the sexual overtone of the pair of dragons of yin and yang colors interweaving through the jade disc is all too self-apparent.54 The yin/yang conjugation, intensified by the ingestion of the “spiritual liquor” (symbolized by the food-and-wine scene), produces a heightened state of sublimation. Early literature compares this state to the scaling of the transcendent heights of mythical Mount Kunlun, with its “Hanging Garden,” running beasts, and “jade spring.” The topography is shown here. Beyond (i.e., above) the jade disc is a ramp guarded by two leopards, leading to a platform (fig. 5). The ramp has been identified as the “Tilted Palace” (qinggong 傾宮) and the platform the “Hanging Garden” (xuanpu 悬圃) associated with Kunlun.55 It is for good reason that Mount Kunlun is the next stop following the beverage scene. The prime mover of the ascent to heaven is the exhilarating and vitalizing act of the breath-cum-sexual cultivation that includes the ingestion of the “heavenly beverage” (vaginal discharge), conservation of vigor and “essence” (i.e., semen) by way of the jade closure. It is notable that the Mawangdui medical texts repeatedly use metaphors, such as “the blue-gem wellspring and numinous winepot” (yaoquan lingzun 瑤泉靈尊), with regard to this physiological act. The beverage metaphor, to recall, clearly evokes Mount Kunlun. This alerts us to the use of the mountain metaphor to map and capture the practitioner’s sensation of feeling “high.” The ingestion of the heavenly beverage produces a giddy state of altered consciousness and sustained elation best captured in the language of mountain climbing. It is for this reason that, in a classical second-century B.C.E. text, the prelude to the ascent up Kunlun is “the sacred springs of the (Yellow) Thearch, from which can be concocted all kinds of medicinal substances to bring physical well-being to the myriad creatures.” The ingestion of the “spiritual spring” then launches the ascent: one first scales

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the peaks of Kunlun, then the “Cool Wind Mountain,” then the hanging garden, and finally heaven.56 This parallels the process laid out in the Mawangdui medical literature on breath-cum-sexual cultivation. Drinking “heavenly beverage” (tianjiang 天漿) from the “blue-gem wellspring and numinous winepot”—which evoke Mount Kunlun—leads to the “dragon breathing at dawn.” “The person who is capable of it [going through this process] invariably becomes a spirit. Thus, he is capable of achieving release of the form. The person who perceives the great way skims the clouds as he moves. From the beautiful jade above, like water flowing, he can range far; like the dragon ascending, he can rise high, quick and untiring in strength.”57 The process is capped by a climax: one’s “longevity forms a triad with the sun and moon (shou can ri yue 壽參日月).”58 But we are jumping the gun here. Let us return to the image of the lady standing in profile between heaven and earth (fig. 5). Here, according to the Mawangdui medical manuscripts, the revitalized breaths “flow into form,”59 much as a liquid mass is poured into a mold to solidify. The yin/yang conjugation and the consolidating jade closure bring together the deceased’s scattered breaths, which now morph into a human form—the image of the marquise at the center of the painting. Before this stage, the deceased is present in the painted banner only as an unformed or amorphous flowing breath. The ritual-offering scene in the human world—comprising five food and wine vessels and tripods and seven human figures in reverent attendance—presents the deceased only in terms of her absence. Between the six attendants is an embellished garment box or “suitcase” (qie 篋) used in the soul-summoning ritual. Following the attempt to summon the departed spirit by waving her garment and calling out her name, the caller would descend from the rooftop; the deceased’s garment would then be dropped and placed in the case.60 The case depicted in the painting is covered with either patterned brocade or a painted design, which decidedly echoes the marquise’s robe above. As a container of the deceased’s garment, the box registers her erstwhile existence, now a mere absence, and points to its visual echo—the lady’s standing figure positioned between heaven and earth—as a departed and unattached apparition taking human shape. Incidentally, it is significant that the “banquet scene” is exclusively peopled by male figures. In contrast, the corresponding scene on the banner from Tomb 3, that of the marquise’s son, features only female attendants.61 This arrangement is inexplicable except in symbolic—rather than physical—terms: the female tomb occupant’s dominant yin disposition would need the complementary replenishment of yang elements to achieve the revitalizing restitution. Likewise, her son’s primarily yang constitution would require the yin force to be revitalized. The successful yin/yang conjugation is seen to crystallize into human form. The common characterization of this image as a “portrait” of the deceased is therefore misleading. Serving memorial functions, portraits seek

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to fix permanently the memory of the dead. Here, however, the human “form” is transitional in nature, a short stop in the extended process of revitalization. Its subsequent disappearance in the next stage is as significant as its appearance in this one. The revitalizing process culminates in a celestial state of sublimation. “Releasing the form . . . like the ascending dragon,”62 the revitalized spirit flies to the ethereal realm of transcendence to merge with the nebulous mass of spirits. Heaven is here signified by the celestial canopy, beneath which hovers the “canopy bird” (yiniao 翳鳥), the messenger of the celestial god.63 Above the celestial canopy is the heavenly gate guarded by porters (dihun 帝閽); beyond the gate is the “celestial court” (tianting 天庭) illuminated by the sun and the moon (fig. 6).64 This sublimated state also entails the loss of the individual self and the shedding of one’s identifiable form and bodily frame. Early texts characterize this exultant finale as a return to the origin65—a vague state of affairs best left unspecified, since the force of the scenario resides in nebulous merging and formations. However, the imperative to visualize abstract states leaves the painter with no choice but to be concrete and specific. The Tomb 1 banner parses this scenario into, among other things, two key images. A young female in a plain blue robe in the upper-left corner reaches the crescent moon on the wing of the yin dragon (fig. 6). That a male heads for the sun in the T-shaped painting from Tomb 3 (fig. 9) confirms the gender difference here. In the Tomb 1 painting, the lady’s spirit returns to the moon, the yin origin (fig. 6). In its capacity to “grow once more after its death,”66 the moon figures the state of periodic death and rebirth. To the moon was accrued the lore of Chang’e, the legendary’s Archer Yi’s wife. She is said to have flown to the moon on the strength of the elixir of immortality she had stole from her husband, only to become the toad in the moon—a creature of periodic skin-shedding, hence, cycles of death and renewal—thus further embodying the regenerative nature of the moon.67 The configuration in the painting of the crescendo moon, the female figure in flight, and the toad thus harmonizes with the symbolic force of the Chang’e lore; the marquise’s gender lends further aptitude to the situation. Meanwhile, the yin/yang conjugation in the macrocosm and her microcosm—the two are indistinguishable—finally reaches closure, as signified by the top-center figure with a serpent tail (fig. 6). The mysterious identity of this figure has long been contested;68 two crucial pieces of evidence may clarify the matter. First, the painting offers a key visual clue. The top-center figure visually echoes the writhing red serpent between the Grand One’s parted legs at the bottom (fig. 4). The reprisal of the serpentine motif suggests the beginning and end of a regenerative process. The Grand One in the watery domain spawns yin and yang breaths, whose conjugation sets in motion a

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vitalization in both macrocosm and microcosm. The serpentine ring at the top (fig. 6) signifies the final closure of this movement. The revitalization process as such also finds its support in the Mawangdui medical manuscripts. The conjugation of yin/yang breaths, nourished by breath renewal and food and wine replenishment, leads to the soaring of the “dragon breaths,” which then “flow into form.” The process eventually culminates in an exalted state: “your longevity forms a triad with the sun and moon; and you become the blossom between heaven and earth.”69 This aptly describes the scene at the top of the banner. That much is clear. More difficult to pinpoint is the ambiguous identity of the figure at the top (fig. 6). The visual and textual evidence creates the impression of the image as the deceased’s spirit in celestial transcendence. Yet to recall, the revitalization process is supposed to culminate in a nebulous state characterized by the loss of individual identity. The afterlife scenario was often imagined in early China as a return to the origin,70 a primordial state populated by a cumulative community of the collective dead and emblemized by the primordial ancestor. The half-human, half-serpent hybrid therefore conveys the primal character. Hence, the legendary primordial thearchs—Paoxi, Nüwa, Shennong, and Xiahou—are all said to have a “serpentine body with a human face.”71 The iconic top-center figure in the banner (fig. 6) likewise embodies the spiritual and primordial nebula of ancestry or even mankind, joined by the deceased’s ascending spirit. It is a nebulous state of “longevity” forming a “triad with the sun and moon.” A comparison with the T-shaped silk painting from Tomb 3 is instructive. The celestial realm depicted therein comprises, along its central axis, a succession of paired figures: first, a pair of deer-riding capped male figures; above, two fishes flank a pair of intertwined half-human, half-serpentine figures (fig. 9), presumably Fuxi and Nüwa, the legendary creators of mankind. The underlying idea here is that the copulation of yin and yang forces leads to the creation of life. The T-shaped painting from Tomb 1 (fig. 6) ostensibly revises this composition. A single half-human, half-serpent figure replaces the intertwined pair. Instead of filling the celestial realm with multitude of stars, as in the Tomb 3 painting (fig. 9), here the Tomb 1 painting shows a group of eight red dots underneath the sun.72 This revision was made presumably to fit the tomb occupant’s female gender. The top-center half-human, half-serpent figure (fig. 9) is very likely the “Mother Star” (Nüqi 女岐), known to have given birth to “her nine children without union.”73 The practice of painting the Mother Star in Han times is well known.74 This harmonizes with our painting here, if we count the sun as one more “luminary” in addition to the eight small red dots beneath it, totaling nine. Number crunching is less relevant than the symbolic situation of the Mother Star in relation to her progeny of starlets. The ancestral pedigree is thus made more specific

Figure 9. T-shaped silk painting from Tomb 3 at Mawangdui, the tomb of the Marquise Dai’s son, ca.168 B.C.E. Length 233 cm., width (top) 144 cm. Photograph courtesy of Hunan Provincial Museum.

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to highlight the female ancestral icon in the numinous heaven, tailor-made to fit the marquise’s memorial situation. Alternatively, the astral signs make sense if we once again rely on the Mawangdui medical literature as a guide and continue our interpretation of the composition as a depiction of “conjoining yin and yang” that draws on the language of sexual cultivation. One Mawangdui medical manuscript contains a litany of the benefits derived from withholding one’s sperm, despite sexual excitation, from ejaculation during intercourse as a means of macrobiotic hygiene: In the way of coitus with Yin, stay the heart, settle and secure it; and the form and vapor secure one another. Thus it is said at the first arrival without emission, ears and eyes are perceptive and bright; at the second arrival without emission, the voice’s vapor rises high; at the third arrival without emission, skin and hide glow; at the fourth arrival without emission, spine and upper side suffer no injury; at the fifth arrival without emission, buttock and ham can be squared; at the sixth arrival without emission, the hundred vessels pass through; at the seventh arrival without emission, your entire life is without calamity; at the eighth arrival without emission, you can have a lengthy longevity; at the ninth arrival without emission, you penetrate spirit illumination.75 The key graph, now commonly corrected as “emission” (xie 瀉), is rendered in the manuscript as “star” (xing 星).76 Even though it ought to be correctly spelled and treated as “emission,”77 the graph “star” 星 may have cued the painter to take the word literally by picturing a star in the form of a red dot following the pictorial convention of Han times. Eight unspent “stars” (meaning emissions; 星=瀉) already promise “a lengthy longevity.” The climactic ninth—signaled in the painting by the sun—as the stars and sun are often treated more or less equally as celestial luminaries—reasonably leads to “spirit illumination,” a state that fittingly involves the sun (fig. 6). The images in the painting therefore repeatedly alert us to the physiological overtone of what at the outset appears to be a cosmographic description. Instructions on sexual cultivation in Mawangdui manuscripts in fact often read like topographic accounts. In one account, the geography traversed encompasses “chambers,” a “basin,” a “ford,” the sea, a mountain, and a “gate.” That all this comes down to a geography of the human body becomes clear only when the text flags body parts and positions: The recipe for whenever you will be conjoining Yin and Yang: Grip the hands, and emerge at the Yang side of the wrists; stroke the elbow chambers; press the side of the underarms; ascend the stove trivet; press the neck zone; stroke the receiving canister; cover the

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encircling ring; descend the broken basin; cross the sweet-liquor ford; skim the Spurting Sea; ascend Constancy Mountain; enter the dark gate; ride the coital muscle; suck the essence and spirit upward. Then you can have lasting vision and exist in unison with heaven and earth.78 Significantly, the ascension narrative culminates in the subject’s “unison with heaven and earth.” The climax is identical with the description cited previously: one’s “longevity forms a triad with the sun and moon.”79 The half-human, half-serpent figure in the banner is therefore precisely this envisioned “longevity” in the company of the sun and moon (fig. 6).80 That a figure other than the earthly image of the deceased is presented should not surprise us. To the extent that the whole ascent to heaven is all but a trance-induced vision and an out-of-body experience, there is indeed an ambiguity concerning the subject of the ascent. It is rarely considered in Han discourse as the whole individual being. Instead, it is often the nonboldily part of the self, that is, the ethereal spirit (hun 魂)—by some accounts some form of will-o’-the-wisp (“essence and spirit”), in others the abstract and elusive spiritual well-being of “longevity” (shou 壽 in one Mawangdui manuscript), or simply an unspecified, vague alter ego of the implied reader of the text. Practically all the Mawangdui manuscripts on macrobiotic hygiene aiming to achieve longevity specify that the ultimate goal is to attain “spiritual illumination” (shenming 神明). One manuscript discusses how to achieve this goal: You must face the sun and moon and suck in the rays of their essence; . . . drink running beasts’ wellspring blossom. You can repel agedness and restore vigor, becoming lustrous and glowing. . . . Use the sun to cook and boil. Then the spirit becomes keen, [the ears] perceptive, and [the eyes] bright. . . . Suck in the spirit mist; drink that heavenly beverage. Bring it to the five depots, with the aim of storing it deeply. Perform dragon breathing at dawn; the vapor and form, then, become hard. [. . .] nears water. Essence and vapor are congealed, hardy, and long lasting. Spirit harmony is obtained inside; ethereal-spirit and earthly-spirit are gleaming. The five depots become firm and white, their jade color having a renewed glow. Your longevity forms a triad with the sun and moon; and you become the blossom between heaven and earth.81 The celestial scene in the painting perfectly captures this exultant state of spiritual illumination (fig. 6). The sun and moon constitute this illumination, or the source of the “essence.” The end result is the achievement of one’s spiritual illumination on a par with the sun and moon. We can easily

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transpose to the burial situation the ritual specialist’s address to the interlocutor of the text. With the painted banner facing the deceased, its implicit exhortation is very likely as follows: “You must face the sun and moon and suck in the rays of their essence; . . . drink that heavenly beverage. . . . Your longevity forms a triad with the sun and moon; and you become the blossom between heaven and earth.”

THE LACQUER-PAINTED COFFINS The scheme of a graduated regeneration process or narrative mapped out by the banner is pictorially reiterated on the painted coffins from Tomb 1. The central chamber of the tomb, surrounded by four side chambers, contains a set of four nested lacquer coffins (fig. 2). The outermost is a dark coffin, followed by a dark-ground coffin with animal and cloud motifs painted in bright colors, then a red-ground coffin with figural and geometrical patterns, and finally an inner brocade-covered coffin. The innermost coffin holds the body of Xinzhui 辛追, Marquise Dai of Changsha, lying in state, her head toward the north. Featuring pictorial images of clouds, animals, monstrous spirits, and topographies, the lacquer coffins form a deliberate and wellorchestrated visual program, as each coffin possesses a distinct surface decor, iconography, and color scheme. The vivacity of the images clearly creates a pictorial world surrounding the coffin occupant’s body. It is therefore tempting to view the pictorial world as an imaginary space traversed by the tomb occupant’s spirit. This body/space distinction, however, soon leads to a conceptual quagmire: does the painting on the nested coffins suggest an outside-in or an inside-out movement? As the coffins’ color scheme shifts from outer/black to inner/red, hence from yin to yang and death to life, the implied movement of the tomb occupant’s spirit appears to be outside-in. Yet how do we account for this impossible spatial logic, namely that the pictorial program pulls the occupant’s spirit away from the comfort of the tomb’s household setting? Does not the soul-summoning ritual attempt to call back the wandering spirit, warning of the perils of all quarters? This problem is of our own making. It stems from the entrenched modern habit of separating the body from space. In second-century B.C.E. China, the human organism was perceived as a much more fluid construct drawing on cosmic and spiritual sources.82 Heaven endows it with essence while earth imbues it with form.83 The body is something of a vessel that allows for the passage and dwelling of external vital “essence,” yin and yang vapor and spirits. Death is caused by the loss or imbalance of yin and yang. To restore life to the dead is to have these cosmic forces in proper supply and coordination. The revival of life is thus visualized in cosmic terms involving the traffic of vapors, spirits, transcendent topographies, and the like. Consequently, rather than depicting the tomb occupant’s distinct body in space, the painted coffins lay out the process of bodily transformation as

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part of cosmic flux. The numinous space, teeming with vapor and spirits, is at once external and internal to the body. The painted coffins map out a symbolic process of procreation and revitalization. The outermost coffin first puts the yin/yang interplay in stark contrast.84 Painted, without figures, black on the outside and red inside, the coffin epitomizes the yin-to-yang process and heralds the spirits-enacted yin/yang drama on the inner painted coffins. The scheme of outer/black and inner/red indicates an imaginary movement from the outer layer to the inner core, a symbolic transition of overcoming the excessive yin and regaining the deficient yang. Moving from outside in, the surface of the second coffin becomes animated with pictorial images. On all its five painted external panels (top, head, foot, and two long sides), fantastic figures move and float amid undulating vapor patterns set against a dark ground or void (fig. 10). The vapors are not just decorative patterns; they signify the tomb occupant’s bodily condition. The medical manuscripts from Tomb 3 provide us with the best glossing of the pictorial scene here. The human organism is understood as an aggregate of tubular vessels (mai 脈) of yang and yin dispositions. The yang vessels are “the vapor of heaven.” The yin vessels are “the vapor of earth, and are the vessels of death. When ailments of the yin (vessels) create disorder, death occurs within ten days. The yin (vessels) putrefy the depots and rot the intestines, and they control killing.”85 Here is a guideline to our painting. The panels picture the condition of the tomb occupant caught in binary oppositions: heaven/yang/life above and earth/yin/death below. As such, the spatial relationship is fraught with significance. The upper edge of the headboard, associated with heaven, signifies the realm of yang; the bottom, earth and yin. A female figure in profile—the marquise’s avatar—shows up at the bottom of the headboard (fig. 10), thereby signifying the tomb occupant’s earthbound condition. In other words, her bodily condition is close to the realm of yin and death. All is not lost, however. In this universe in flux, death and life are contingent upon the ascent and descent of yin and yang vapors, which can revive life from being moribund. The very condition of yin/death, the nadir of an evolving cycle, is also a necessary phase for the breeding of life. The medical literature therefore speaks of going through the “obscure darkness” (minmin 冥冥) as a prerequisite of procreation: “Thus when human beings are engendered, having entered into obscure darkness and exited from obscure darkness, they first become humans (gu ren zhi chan ye, ru yu minmin, chu yu minmin, nai shi wei ren 故人之產 [也], 入於冥冥, 出於冥冥, 乃始為人).”86 Sure enough, if death—a condition indicated by the occupant’s position at the bottom edge—is the starting point, what ensues is a transformative process that culminates in the beatitude at the top. The appearance of the marquise’s avatar sets in motion the twirling vapor (qi 氣). The thrice-repeated image of a long-tailed bird riding the

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Figure 10. Headboard of the black-ground coffin, Mawangdui Tomb 1. Second century B.C.E. From CMYH, vol. 1, fig. 18. b. Detail of the headboard of the black-ground coffin. Photograph courtesy of Hunan Provincial Museum.

vapors in the composition is significant (fig. 10). Birds, creatures of the high, embody the yang force in the cosmos. The long-tailed bird therefore indicates the struggling yang condition in the marquise’s microcosm. More significantly, the bird close to the marquise’s avatar cranes its neck upward, its beak emitting a bubble, thereby enacting “breathing and blowing, inhaling and exhaling,”87 part of the breath cultivation practiced in early China. It is premised upon the macrobiotic view of the human body as responsive to the quality of vapors passing in and out of it. The practitioner is urged to “exhale the old and inhale the fresh.” The regimen involves acts

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mimicking animal poses, “imitating in gymnastics the steps of the bear, the fluttering and expanding of the wings of birds, the ablutions of the duck, the stooping of the gibbon, and the glare of the owl, the concentrated stare of the tiger.”88 In conjunction, the antlered archer—a potent yang creature—on the footboard aims his bow to shoot those exhaled bubbles, the “old” and moribund vapors (fig. 11). Dusk and dawn are designated optimal moments for breath cultivation. Accordingly, two owls spaced apart vertically—one at the midpoint and the other close to the top—mark respectively the dusk and dawn (fig. 10), much like their counterparts on the painted banner. As yang creatures of night, owls signify the sun after dark. They therefore bracket here the nocturnal duration.89 The night marks the total reign of the yin force, depletion of yang, and the nadir of life. The design visualizes this condition by showing the bird, the yang force, fumbling in the dark. The vapor-

Figure 11. An antlered goat-headed figure shoots at the bubbles exhaled by a bird. Detail of the footboard of the dark-ground coffin, Mawangdui Tomb 1. Second century B.C.E. Photograph courtesy of Hunan Provincial Museum.

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exhaling birds suggest the appropriation of the breath cultivation from the living world into the afterlife cosmos as a symbolic means of revitalization. Likewise, the squatting figure in the middle of the west sideboard (fig. 12) may well enact the pose of “sitting and pulling the eight radical-chords” (zuoyin bawei 坐引八維): “I pull the eight radical-chords to guide myself, / harboring the drifting flow to attain longevity.”90 The “drifting flow” here means the midnight air of the north.91 Returning to the headboard (fig. 10): as the owl at the top marks the dawn, a key moment of breath renewal, the human figure with unbound hair and long sleeves springs forward in the “Merlin” (zhan 鹯) pose of breath cultivation.92 The situation recalls the description in an early energy-guiding manual: “Spring days. After rinsing

Figure 12. A squatting figure, owls, antlered creatures, and animals amid cloud patterns. Detail of the painting on the west sideboard of the dark-ground coffin, Mawangdui Tomb 1. Second century B.C.E. From Zhongguo kaogu wenwu zhi mei, pl. 34 (right half).

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in the morning, . . . unfasten the hair, stroll to the lower end of the hall to meet the purest of dew and to receive the essence of heaven, . . . these are the means to increase accord.”93 It is no coincidence that the vignette here is located at the juncture of dawn, as suggested by the upper owl, and at heaven at the top (fig. 10). The coffin occupant’s yang vapor is now gaining momentum. Much of the rest of the painted coffin depicts what it takes to conjugate the yin and yang breaths and thereby regenerate life. Animals and fantastic creatures here are identifiable as agents of either yin or yang disposition. The serpent is a watery and earthly yin symbol. The bird, a solar symbol, is a yang emblem. The monsters clasping and strangling a bird apparently serve the yin force. In contrast, the bipeds with deer antlers are creatures of the yang force, for the deer antlers, with their phallic overtones, are a potent inseminating symbol of fertility in the Chu culture.94 Since life and death are measured in proportion to the heavenly and earthly vapors, the restoration of life means regulation of these vapors. This principle gave rise to the macrobiotic hygiene practiced in ancient China. Associated with earth, the grain produces the yin vapor. So, the longevityseeking individual is advised to eliminate the consumption of grain—the earthly product that leads to decay—by practicing the austere purifying dietetic known as “eliminating the grain” (bi gu 避穀). He is urged to “eat vapor” (shi qi 食氣), the product of heaven, by practicing breath cultivation.95 The goal is to let out the stale yin vapor and supply the body with fresh and invigorating yang vapor.96 “The essence of cultivating vapor is to exit from death and enter into life (zhi qi zhi jing, chu si ru sheng 治氣之精, 出死入生).”97 The painted panels repeatedly show a bird either bending down or raising its neck, from which are issued a string of bubbles (fig. 11): a visualization of “circulating vapor” (xing qi 行氣), or breath cultivation. The exercise has to observe careful timing, as dusk and dawn in particular are preferred moments for the regimen.98 This accounts for the owls in the painting. In the ancient mytho-cosmic thinking, the dusk marks the sinking of the sun into the underground, where it moves from the western extremity to the eastern horizon.99 The owl, in its archaic character, is a symbol of nocturnal solar essence, that is, the state of the sun after dusk and before dawn.100 It is notable that the owl appears twice on both the headboard and the rightside board. In each case, the two owls are spaced apart in a below/above relationship (fig. 10), marking respectively the dusk (beginning of darkness, or death) and dawn (beginning of revived life). The owls may also signal—or doubly signify as—a related physical exercise known as “guiding and pulling” (daoyin 導引) integral to the breath regimen. A silk manual containing forty-four postures of the breathcultivation exercise unearthed from Mawangdui Tomb 3 (fig. 13) testifies to

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Figure 13. Energy-Guiding Diagram (detail). Ink and color on silk. Mawangdui Tomb 3. Second century B.C.E. From Mawangdui Hanmu wenwu, ed. Fu Juyou et al. (Changsha: Hunan chubanshe, 1992), p. 148.

the relevance of this exercise in our context. Some of the bodily postures imitate animal gestures and poses, which are accordingly named “crane,” “dragon ascending,” “monkey bawling to pull internal hotness,” “gibbon shouting,” “bear ramble,” “hen,” and so in.101 On the basis of other early sources, the regimen also includes the “gawking like owls,”102 or “the glare of the owl” (chishi 鴟視): As to such motions as breathing and blowing, inhaling and exhaling, spitting out the old, drawing in the new breath, imitating in gymnastic the steps of the bear, the fluttering and expanding of the wings of birds, the ablutions of the duck, the stooping of the gibbon, and the glare of the owl, the concentrated stare of the tiger,—these motions are the means used by man to cultivate the bodily form. (ruo chuixu huxi, tugu naxin, xiongjing niaoshen, fuyu yuanjue, chishi hugu, shi yangxing zhi ren ye 若吹呴呼吸, 吐故內新, 熊經鳥伸, 鳧浴蝯躩, 鴟視虎顧, 是養形之人也)103

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By the same token, other postures of breath cultivation—such as “sitting and pulling the eight radical-chords” or “pulling lower body pain” (fig. 13)104— may account for the squatting figure on the west-side panel (fig. 12). The speaker of a Han southern song gives a subtext of such breathing postures: “I pull the eight radical-chords to guide myself, / harboring the drifting flow to attain longevity (yin bawei yi zidao xi, han hangxie yi changsheng 引八維以自道[導]兮, 含沆瀣以長生).”105 Other therapeutic means include the treatment of ailments in ways likewise premised on the yin/yang theory. The body is believed to contain eleven tubular vessels of either yin or yang disposition.106 These vessels facilitate the passage of the pervasive vapors, thereby linking the cosmic and somatic spaces. Excess or deficiency of either vapor in vessels of a certain part of the body may cause an ailment. Therapies involve cauterizing (jiu 灸) or lancing (bian 砭) the vessels.107 Therapeutic impulses of this kind motivate the pictorial program, as death in the Mawangdui tomb is understood as no more than the nadir of an evolving life cycle, and the revival of life hinges on the continued effort to improve the pathogenic condition. The therapeutic lancing may well inform the scenes of fantastic creatures attacking their enemy with lances, as these creatures embody excessive yin and yang forces (fig. 14).

Figure 14. A goat-headed figure attacks an ox with a lance. Detail of painting on the west sideboard of the dark-ground coffin, Mawangdui Tomb 1. Second century B.C.E. From Hunan Provincial Museum, Changsha Mawangdui yihao Hanmu (Beijing: Wenwu, 1973), vol. 2, pl. 39.

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The yin/yang interplay culminates on the coffin lid, which is symbolically close to the yang realm above. Repeated serpent-fighting scenes— including the goat-headed bipeds (yang) devouring snakes (yin)—signal the prolonged engagement of the upper yang with the lower yin force. A notable departure from these is a bird (yang) clutching a fish (yin)—instead of the repeated serpent—in its beak (fig. 15). Not merely a figural variation of the same yang/yin theme, the scene marks the “reawakening” or revival of life, which takes both yin and yang to regenerate. Classical texts describe the serpent-to-fish transformation as a symbolic correlate of “awakening.”108 Here we begin to have a glimpse of hope that the coffin occupant will revive. The image of a jade disc—a “jade closure”—dominates the footboard (fig. 16) of the third coffin from outside in (fig. 2). The appearance of the jade disc, that is, jade closure, signifies the accumulation and concentration of “essence” and vapor. This is accompanied by a marked change of color tone. The painted coffin features a uniformly red ground, signaling

Figure 15. Drawing of the figures from the painting on the lid of the dark-ground coffin, Mawangdui Tomb 1. Second century B.C.E. From Zhongguo kaogu wenwu zhi mei, vol. 8, p. 149.

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Figure 16. Jade disc. Footboard of the red-ground coffin. Mawangdui Tomb 1. Second century B.C.E. From Zhongguo kaogu wenwu zhi mei, vol. 8, pl. 39.

the dominance of yang. This concentration of essence in turn signals the arrival of “spiritual illumination,” that is, something akin to consciousness and awakening. Once the essence enters the human body, “it is deposited to form a wellspring source . . . a deep pool of vapor. When the pool does not go dry, the four limbs are solid; when the wellspring is not exhausted, the nine apertures penetrate.”109 The decor on the red-lacquer coffin evokes the wellspring source. The east-side panel shows fantastic animals and creatures riding dragons across the “weak water” surrounding the proverbial Mount Kunlun (fig. 18).110 The headboard presents a pair of deer (yang creatures) ascending the mountain (fig. 17). As Kunlun is located in the west, it is significant that the west panel shows angular lozenge patterns (fig. 19), signifying the pristine, transcendent mountain—abstraction and geometrical streamlining is an effective formal strategy to picture the never-never land made of patterned precious objects (jade, etc.). The symbolic import of Mt. Kunlun is crucial to this yin-to-yang physiological process of revitalization. The mythical geography has spawned the conviction that the painting here indeed represents the deceased’s spiritual ascent of the proverbial mount out there in the west, thereby exacerbating the presumed problem of whether the burial implicitly encourages the

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Figure 17. A pair of deer ascends the mythical Mt. Kunlun. Headboard of the redground coffin. Mawangdui Tomb 1. Second century B.C.E. From Zhongguo kaogu wenwu zhi mei, vol. 8, pl. 38.

Figure 18. Drawing of painting on the east side of the red-ground coffin. Mawangdui Tomb 1. Second century B.C.E. From Zhongguo kaogu wenwu zhi mei, vol. 8, p. 152, below.

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Figure 19. Drawing of painting on the west side of the red-ground coffin. Mawangdui Tomb 1. Second century B.C.E. From Zhongguo kaogu wenwu zhi mei, vol. 8, p. 153, below.

deceased to stay or depart. The problem is moot if we follow the ancient Chinese propensity to translate, or transpose, physiological states into mythico-geographic terms. Consider the following instruction on bodily cultivation in the medical manuscripts from Mawangdui Tomb 3: Thus he who is skilled at cultivating vapor and concentrating essence accumulates the signless. Essence and spirit overflow like a wellspring. Suck in the sweet dew and have it accumulate. Drink the blue-gem wellspring and numinous winepot and make it circulate. Eliminate the foul and love the habitual, and spirit then flows into the form. The way to suck in vapor: it must be made to reach to the extremities, so that essence is generated and not deficient.111 The “blue-gem wellspring and numinous winepot” evoke Mount Kunlun. The mythical geography is said to have a “blue-gem pool” (yaochi 瑤池) where the Queen Mother of the West exchanged a toast with the legendary King Mu who visited there.112 Mount Kunlun is at times simply a spatial metaphor for saliva.113 The geographic reference is all but a metaphoric analogy to the physiological state of concentration of “essence.” The spatial trope fits the situation of breath cultivation “made to reach to the extremities.” In other words, the “extremities” are reached by physiological acts—breath cultivation, for instance—which can be correlated with the far-flung mountain. From Mount Kunlun ensues a heaven-bound sublimation and exaltation. The top panel of the red-ground coffin shows a pair of dragons ascending (fig. 20), visually echoing the top celestial section of the T-shaped silk painting (fig. 6). This space/state transference produces an effect palpably captured by the decorative scheme of the innermost coffin (fig. 2).114 The surface decor

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Figure 20. Drawing of painting on the lid of the red-ground coffin. Mawangdui Tomb 1. Second century B.C.E. From Zhongguo kaogu wenwu zhi mei, vol. 8, p. 153, above.

of the coffin is made of bird feathers, signifying a transcendent ethereal state of inhaling the essence of heavenly vapor. The experience of this state is thus effectively conveyed through the analogy of bird flight. The analogy harks back to the image of the bird clutching a fish on the black-ground coffin (fig. 15)—the stage of yin-and-yang interaction. Now in the innermost layer, the yang force finally gains the upper hand. The body that previously struggled in the dark phase of the black-painted coffin has now acquired the yang essence emblematized by the soaring bird. As “the spirit then flows into the form,” the bodily form is spiritualized and etherealized. “The person . . . becomes a spirit, . . . capable of achieving release from the form.”115 In other words, the body has dissolved into the freedom of a bird.

BODY AND SPACE; ART AND RITUAL The visual program governing the paintings in Mawangdui Tomb 1 thus fulfills a symbolic function—its goal is to revive the dead. Acting on the premise that death is a matter of loss of yin/yang supply and balance, the means of revival is through “conjoining yin and yang” vapors. The metaphoric language used as guidance in the macrobiotic hygiene function of conjoining yin and yang through breath and sexual cultivation constitutes the basic grammar of motives or the visual vocabulary for the pictorial program. The body/space ambiguity inherent in the symbolic act of conjoining yin and yang is thus integral to the Mawangdui paintings. Premised on the early notion of the body as a product or vessel of cosmic yin and yang forces, the boundary between the cosmic space out there and the bodily interior is thus highly porous. The paintings chart an imaginary journey—so it seems—of the deceased’s soul toward Mount Kunlun and from there further

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up to heaven. Given the goal of revival of the dead, it becomes clear that the geography thus traversed is all but a figurative mapping of the physiological processes of procreation, replenishment, insemination, and invigoration. Part of the progression is achieved through cosmic yin/yang copulation and excitation on the assumption that the bodily transformation stems from cosmic interplay. This conceptual oscillation between cosmos and body results in an ambiguous pictorial space teeming with visual double entendres. A jade disc, commonly understood as a symbolic conduit to heaven, may thus be a veiled reference to the physiological act of carefully measured and controlled insemination. It is still a conduit to heaven—only the “heaven” in question is itself a metaphor for sexual bliss. Mount Kunlun, with its associated “bluegem wellspring and winepot,” could be no more than a metaphoric mapping of the sensation experienced in breath and sexual cultivation. Not that the paintings in the tomb prompt the deceased toward an imaginary sexual activity; rather, veiled references to intercourse are part and parcel of the language of macrobiotic hygiene that is believed to produce longevity in life and, in this case, the afterlife. Pressing these token acts of copulation into service in the pictorial program is a symbolic way of achieving what these symbolic acts aspire toward—specifically, to take the loaded language of Mawangdui medical texts literally, “to exit from death and enter into life.” In light of this, the question posed at the outset of this essay appears to be an inadequate formulation. Does the painted banner guide the soul to heaven or summon it to the tomb? Placed on the innermost coffin and close to the deceased’s body, the painting is about the transformative process undergone by the deceased. As to the question where or in what space this process unfolds, there is no easy answer. Yet the underlying premise that it takes both heaven and earth to cause bodily change is certain; the body enacts in cosmic terms. The occurrence outside is therefore what goes on inside the body. The macrocosm is the microcosm. Space—or rather spatial designation—is therefore less an issue than we think. What matters most is the body’s transformative process, for which space is all but a mapping device and frame of reference. The deceased does not really go anywhere, as her body is deeply ensconced in the layered coffins. What the living cares for is to see, or imagine, that she undergoes that transformation whereby she “comes to life,” or attains afterlife immortality—however oxymoronic that may sound to our modern ears. For that transformation to take place, a cosmic arena encompassing both heaven and earth is required. Once the cosmos enters the picture, we—or she—appear to step out. No matter how cosmic the setting or the scale may appear to be, the dramatic action remains inside the bodily theater. Ultimately, the cosmic picture is a scan of her inner condition. The case therefore impels us to rethink the relationship between art and ritual. The inadequate formulation of the initial question (i.e., guidance to heaven or tomb?) stems from our subscription to an unspoken assumption

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that paintings in the burial are isomorphic to the soul-summoning ritual. This study shows that the ritual provides no guideline for the pictorial program in Mawangdui Tomb 1. The paintings in fact enact a ritual process of conjoining yin and yang on the strength of the logic governing the macrobiotic hygiene regimen laid out in the Mawangdui manuscripts. Aiming at the revival of life, the ritual is performed by pictorial images of spirits, demons, fantastic animals, and the deceased’s own likenesses. The enactment qualifies as a ritual by virtue of its performance aspect, a programmatic regimen, and deep investment in the symbolic value of the transformative process. The conjoining–yin/yang ritual, pictorially constituted, has a complicated and tortuous relationship with the soul-summoning ritual performed in real life. The soul-summoning, as extrapolated from the Songs of the South and other sources, may have had its currency in the Warring States period. Whether it was performed in the same way in the middle of the second century B.C.E. is not entirely clear. Assuming its continued practice, the pictured ritual appears to pick up where the performed soul-summoning leaves off, with different underlying assumptions. Premised upon a body/spirit split, the soul-summoning seeks to reunite the spirit and body. The pictured virtual ritual of conjoining yin and yang, to the contrary, assumes no definite identifiable spirit; instead, it treats spirit as a volatile force—present in both the cosmos and the body—that constantly redefines and reshapes the body, hence the conditions of life and death. The rapport between the two kinds of rituals is just as notable. Having warned of the perils of the Four Quarters and heaven and earth, the soul-summoning beckons the wandering soul home with the comforts of the household and, above all, with food, drinks, and sexual bliss. If we consider these as freighted with symbolic import, we see the conjoining of yin and yang act upon the promise held in the soul-summoning. While the question of whether the painted banner guides the soul to heaven or summons it to the tomb is flawed, it nevertheless alerts us to the aftermath of the fashioning of the visual model. Granted, the painted banner from Mawangdui Tomb 1 is better interpreted in the vein of the conjoining-yin/yang macrobiotic language, and “heaven,” in this symbolic scheme of things, ought to be seen simply as a metaphor, a figurative representation of a heightened physiological state rather than a physical space. It is nonetheless conceivable that once this visual and figurative model came into being, it may have elicited a perceptive response that takes the visual metaphors here literally. Therein the composition—and its implied way of visual thinking—may have laid the ground for the imaginary afterlife scenario of the soul’s ascent to heaven. For this new belief system to work, the notion of “soul” needed to be solidified into an identifiable entity. The cues had already been in existence before the Han period, and it was a matter of time before this scenario took hold of the Chinese imagination. Around the middle of the second century B.C.E., however, the belief in a soul had

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not quite taken shape. The Mawangdui paintings both testify against this belief and provide the model for its coming into being.

NOTES 1. Hunansheng bowuguan 湖南省博物館 et al., Changsha Mawangdui yihao Hanmu 長沙馬王堆一號漢墓 (Beijing: Wenwu, 1973; hereafter CMYH); Hunansheng bowuguan et al., Changsha Mawangdui ersanhao Hanmu 長沙馬王堆二 三號漢墓 (Beijing: Wenwu, 2004); Fong Chow, “Ma-Wang-tui: A Treasure-Trove from the Western Han Dynasty,” Artibus Asiae 35.1–2 (1973): 5–14; David Buck, “Three Han Dynasty Tombs at Ma-Wang-Tui,” World Archaeology 7.1 (June 1975): 30–45. 2. See also Eugene Wang. “Whereto Heaven? New Perspective on Mawangdui Paintings,” in Noble Tombs at Mawangdui: Art and Life of the Changsha Kingdom, Third Century B.C.E. to First Century C.E., ed. Chen Jianming (Changsha: Yuelu Publishing House, 2008): 41–58. 3. Hung Wu, “Art in a Ritual Context: Rethinking Mawangdui,” Early China 17 (1992): 17–24, esp. 2, 22. 4. Li Jianmao 李建毛 argues that the underworld remained the primary postmortem destination in the Han imagination and that a distinction should be drawn between the heaven-dwelling “spirit” (shen 神) and the earthly “ghost” (gui 鬼). See Li Jianmao, “Yetan Mawangdui Hanmu T xing bohua de zhuti sixiang—Jian zhiyi ‘yinhun shengtian’ shuo 也談馬王堆漢墓T形帛畫的主題思想— 兼質疑引魂升天說,” Meishu shi lun 3 (1992): 96, 97–100. Li Jianmao 李建毛. “Mawangdui yihao Hanmu bohua xinjie 马王堆一号汉墓帛画新解.” Nanfang wenwu 南方文物 3 (1992): 78–85. A few other scholars share this revisionism. See Yan Xinyuan 顔新元, “Changsha Mawangdui Hanmu T xing bohua zhuti sixiang bianzheng 長沙馬王堆漢墓T形帛畫主題思想辯正,” in Chu wenyi lunji (Wuhan: Hubei meishu chubanshe, 1991), 130–149; Liu Xiaolu 劉曉路, “Mawangdui bohua zai renshi 馬王堆帛畫再認識,” Wenyi yanjiu 3 (1992): 107–115. 5. “Zhaohun 招魂,” in Chuci buzhu, ed. Hong Xingzu 洪興祖 (Beijing: Zhonghua shuju, 1981), 201; David Hawkes, trans, The Songs of the South (London: Penguin Books, 1985), 225; emphasis mine. 6. Yan, “Changsha,” 149; Li, “Yetan,” 100. 7. Jerome Silbergeld has long cautioned against the excess of piling up textual sources to match the images on the banner without a clear awareness of the purpose of its ritual function. See Jerome Silbergeld, “Mawangdui, Excavated Materials, and Transmitted Texts: A Cautionary Note,” Early China 8 (1982–1983): 79–87. 8. Wu, “Art in a Ritual Context,” 5. 9. The primary sources include the Liji and Yili. See Liji jijie 禮記集解, comp. Sun Xidan 孫希旦 (Beijing: Zhonghua shuju, 1989); Yili 儀禮 (Taipei: Kaiming shudian, 1984). 10. According to the Yili, the black cloth measures 1 chi, 3 cun in length; the red cloth 2 chi, 3 chun (12.51). 11. “Shi sangli 士喪禮,” Yili, 12.51–55. 12. Chuci buzhu, 9.197–202; Hawkes, Songs, 219–225. 13. Chuci buzhu, 202–215; Hawkes, Songs, 226–230.

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14. Mo Daocai 莫道才, “Miluo minjian zhaohun ci de chengshi neirong jiqi dui Zhaohun Dazhao yanjiu de qishi 汨羅民間招魂詞的程式内容及其對招魂大招 研究的啓示,” Minzhu yishu 2 (1997): 155–171. 15. CMYH, 2:48, pl. 70; see also Eugene Wang, “Why Pictures in Tombs: Mawangdui Once More,” Orientations 40.2 (March 2009): 1–3. 16. Yili, 12.51. Compare with the body wrapping as reported in the archaeological report, CMYH, 1:28–30. 17. See Wang, “Why Pictures in Tombs?” 77. 18. Granted, the ritual texts counsel against the reuse of the soul-summoning garment to dress the corpse and against interment with it. Cf. Liji jijie, 1134; Wu, “Art in a Ritual Context,” 5. We may, however, draw a distinction between the deceased’s actual garment and the “fei-garment” (i.e., the painted banner), which only symbolically evokes the idea of a garment. 19. CMYH, 1:26, 39. 20. CMYH, 43; Sun Zuoyun 孫作雲, “Changsha Mawangdui yihao Hanmu chutu huafan kaoshi 長沙馬王堆一號漢墓出土畫幡考釋,” in Mawangdui Hanmu yanjiu (Changsha: Hunan renmin chubanshe, 1979; hereafter MHY), 256. Most English-language scholarship has concurred or elaborated on this premise. See A. Gutkind Bulling, “The Guide of the Souls Picture in the Western Han Tomb in Ma-Wang-Tui near Ch’ang Sha,” Oriental Art 20.2 (1974): 158–173; Michael Loewe, Ways to Paradise: The Chinese Quest for Immortality (London: George Allen and Unwin, 1979), 17–59; Ying-Shih Yu, “ ‘O Soul, Come Back!’ A Study in the Changing Conceptions of the Soul and Afterlife in Pre-Buddhist China,” Harvard Journal of Asiatic Studies 47.2 (December 1987): 363–395. 21. Yan, “Changsha,” 149; Li, “Yetan,” 100. 22. Liu, “Mawangdui Xi Han bohua,” 284–285; Li, “Yetan,” 100; Liu, “Mawangdui bohua,” 113. 23. Her identity is firmly established through comparison with her male counterpart in the banner in Tomb 3, apparently a portrait of her son, who predeceased her. 24. Boxes of similar shape found in the tomb of the marquis of Zheng at Leigudun, Suixian, are identified as garment boxes (Hubeisheng bowuguan 湖北 省博物館, Zenghouyi mu wenwu yishu 曾侯乙墓文物藝術 [Wuhan: Hubei meishu chubanshe, 1996], pls. 186–187). The ritual significance attached to the garment box in the soul-summoning ritual also adds credence to the identification of the object in the painting as a garment box. 25. Huainan Honglie jijie 淮南鴻烈集解, comp. Liu Wendian 劉文典 (Beijing: Zhonghua shuju, 1989; hereafter HHJ), 7.218. 26. This binary opposition, at times identified as between the hun 魂 and po 魄, has provided a viable conceptual framework to explain the divergent impulses in ancient burial furnishings. See Zhang Guangzhi (Chang Kwang-chih) 張光直, “Gudai muzang de hunpo guannian 古代墓葬的魂魄觀念,” Zhongguo wenwu bao (28 June 1990); Yu, “O, Soul, Come Back!” K. E. Brashier has questioned the prevalence of the theory in Han times (“Han Thanatology and the Division of ‘Souls,’ ” Early China 21 [1996]: 125–158). 27. Hawkes, Songs, 225.

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28. On the sexual overtones of fish, see Wen Yiduo 聞一多, “Shuo yu 說魚,” in Wen Yiduo quanji (Beijing: Sanlian, 1982), 1:118–138. 29. Liu Zhao 劉釗, Guodian Chujian jiaoshi 郭店楚簡校释 (Fuzhou: Fujian renmin chubanshe, 2005), 42. Sarah Allan first prompted me to identify the figure as the Grand One. 30. The serpentine body associated with the creation god in early Chinese imagination is in fact a more lizardlike creature with short legs. See He Xin 何新, Zhushen de qiyuan 諸神的起源 (Beijing: Guangmin ribao chubanshe, 1996), 56–57. 31. For discussion of the she (altar) as a locus for ritual and festival activities in ancient China, see He Xin, Zhushen de qiyuan, 192–195. 32. Mawangdui Hanmu boshu 馬王堆漢墓帛書, ed. Mawangdui Hanmu boshu zhengli xiaozu 馬王堆漢墓帛書整理小組 (Beijing: Wenwu, 1985; hereafter MHB), 4:155; Ma Jixing 馬繼興, Mawangdui gu yishu kaoshi 馬王堆古醫書考釋 (Changsha: Hunan kexue jishu chubanshe, 1992; hereafter MGK), 978, n. 2; Donald J. Harper, Early Chinese Medical Literature: The Mawangdui Medical Manuscripts (London and New York: Kegan Paul International, 1997), 412–422; Li Ling 李零, Zhongguo fangshu kao (xiuding ben) 中國方術考 (修訂本) (Beijing: Dongfang chubanshe, 2001), 404. 33. Several scholars have already pointed out the significance of the symbolic union of yin and yang elements in the Mawangdui painted banner. On the premise of the division of hun-soul and po-soul, Chen Huang 陳鍠 identifies the “union of hun and po” (he hun po 合魂魄) as the primary symbolic function of the banner (“Chu Han fuguan bohua xingzhi bianxi 楚漢覆棺帛畫性質辨析,” in Zhongguo Hanhua xuehui di jiujie nianhui lunwenji, ed. Zhu Qingsheng [Beijing: Zhongguo shehui chubanshe, 2004], 433–442). Qi Liang 啓良 comes close to my argument about the “conjoining yin and yang” theme of the painting, except that he draws on more general literature to support his argument rather than on the more relevant medical manuscript (“Mawangdui Hanmu feiyi bohua zhuti pojie 馬王堆漢墓非衣帛畫主題破揭,” Qiusuo 2 [1994]: 118–124). 34. Two illustrations of this kind have been unearthed. One is from Mawangdui Tomb 3; the other is contained in the “day book” (rishu 日書) from Shuihudi. See Liu Lexian 劉樂賢, “Mawangdui Hanmu yishu yu Shuihudi Qinjian rishu 馬王堆漢墓醫書與睡虎地秦簡日書,” in Hunansheng bowuguan, Mawangdui Hanmu yanjiu wenji—1992 nian Mawangdui Hanmu guoji xueshu taolunhui lunwen xuan 馬王堆漢墓研究文集—1992 年馬王堆漢墓國際學術討論會論文選 (Changsha: Hunan chubanshe, 1994), 132–135; Liu Lexian 劉樂賢, Shuihudi Qin jian rishu yanjiu 睡虎地秦簡日書研究 (Taipei: Wenjing chubanshe, 1994): 186–197. 35. Branch signs are plotted onto the striding body to allow the location of the baby’s birthday on a specific position of the figure’s body; for example, the head position foretells wealth; beneath the feet, ignobility; etc. (MHB, 4:133; MGK, 814–817; Harper, Medical Manuscripts, 372; Li, Zhongguo fangshu kao, 400–401). 36. Yuan Ke 袁珂, Shanhaijing jiaozhu 山海經校注 (Chengdu: Bashu shushe, 1993), 16.476; HHJ, 150. It is quite possible that the giant here is the yufu 魚婦 mentioned in the Shanhaijing. Several scholars have noted the regenerative overtone of the images (An Zhimin 安志敏, “Changsha xin faxian de Xi Han bohua shitan 長沙新發現的西漢帛畫試探,” in MHY, 251; He Xilin 賀西林, “Cong Changsha

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Chumu bohua dao Mawangdui yihao Hanmu qiguanhua yu bohua 從長沙楚墓帛畫 到馬王堆一號漢墓漆棺畫與帛畫,” Yishushi yanjiu 5 (2003): 154. On the serpent-tofish transformation, see also Liu Zongdi 劉宗迪, Shiluo de tianshu: Shanhaijing yu gudai Huaxia shijie guan 失落的天書：《山海經》與古代華夏世界觀 (Beijing: Shangwu yinshuguan, 2006), 318–320. 37. MHB, 4:147; Harper, Medical Manuscripts, 396. 38. MGK, 913, n. 2. 39. “Shiwen,” MHB, 4:145; MGK, 887, n. 7; Harper, Medical Manuscripts, 389. 40. “Shiwen,” MHB, 4:146; MGK, 888, 889, n. 4; Harper, Medical Manuscripts, 389. 41. The sunset place is variously referred to in classical texts as the Lake Valley (Tangyu 湯谷), Sweet Abyss (Tianyuan 甘淵), and Feather Abyss (Yuyuan 羽淵). See Wang Kunwu 王昆吾, “Chu zongmiao bihua chigui yexian tu 楚宗廟壁 畫鴟龜曳銜圖,” in Zhongguo zaoqi yishu yu zongjiao (Shanghai: Shanghai dongfang chubanshe, 1998), 43. 42. “Quegu shiqi 卻穀食氣,” in MHB, 4:85; MGK, 822–848; Harper, Medical Manuscripts, 305–309; Li, Zhongguo fangshu kao, 346–356. 43. “Shiwen,” MHB, 4:145; Harper, Medical Manuscripts, 385–388. 44. “Shiwen,” MHB, 4:145; Harper, Medical Manuscripts, 385. A different glossing of the line would be: “drinks and food should suit the body” (MGK, 877, n. 7). 45. “Shiwen,” MHB, 4:152; Harper, 411 (emphasis mine). 46. Harper, Medical Manuscripts, 411. “Heavenly beverage” is alternatively glossed as “beautiful wine” (MGK, 974, n. 3). 47. MHB, 4:148. 48. Shang Zhitan 商志覃 identifies the birds as goumang 句芒 based on matching descriptions in the Shanhaijing (“bird body, human face”) and Mozi (“bird body in white clothes”; Niaoshen. sufu sanjue. Mianzhuang zhengfang 鳥身. 素服三絕. 面狀正方) (“Mawangdui yihao Hanmu feiyi shishi 馬王堆一號漢墓非衣試釋,” in MHY, 242, 244, n. 3). The goumang birds are agents of spring, the dragon-riding delegates of the celestial god who can prolong human life (Yuan, Shanhaijing jiaozhu, 314). 49. For various definitions of “spiritual illumination,” see MGK, 870. 50. “Shiwen 十問,” MHB, 4:146; MGK, 890. Translation from Harper, Medical Manuscripts, 390–391. “Tianxia zhidao tan 天下之道談” contains a similar passage: “The matter of spirit illumination lies in what is enclosed. Vigilantly control the jade closure, and spirit illumination will arrive (Shenming zhi shi, zaiyu suobi. Shencao yubi, shenming jiangzhi 神明之事, 在於所閉. 審操玉閉, 神明將至).” See MHB, 4:163; MGK, 1018; Li, Zhongguo fangshu kao, 497; Harper, Medical Manuscripts, 426. 51. Harper, Medical Manuscripts, 390, n. 2. 52. Both Li Ling and Ma Jixing gloss “jade closure” as a means of conserving semen or controlling ejaculation in sexual cultivation. See Li, Zhongguo fangshu kao, 403; MGK, 890–891, nn. 2, 3. 53. MHB, 4:145; Harper, Medical Manuscripts, 389. 54. This is also noted by Qi, “Mawangdui Hanmu feiyi bohua zhuti pojie,” 122.

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55. He Xilin argues that the ramp signifies the “tilted palace” (qinggong 傾宮) of Mt. Kunlun, and the platform represents the “Hanging Garden” of Mount Kunlun (“Cong Changsha,” 156–157). 56. HHJ, 135; John S. Major, Heaven and Earth in Early Han Thought (Albany: State University of New York Press, 2003), 157–158. 57. “Shiwen,” MHB, 4:148. Following Ma Jixing, I gloss miyao 麋瑤 as “beautiful fade” (meiyao 美瑤) instead of the alternative rendition, qunyao 群瑤 (MGK, 931, n. 2). Translation adapted from Harper, Medical Manuscripts, 398. 58. “Shiwen,” MHB, 4:147, 152; Harper, Medical Manuscripts, 394, 411. 59. MHB, 4:147; Harper, Medical Manuscripts, 394. 60. Yang Tianyu 楊天宇, ed., Yili yizhu 儀禮譯註 (Shanghai: Shanghai guji, 2004), 343–344. 61. See Wang, “Why Pictures in Tombs?” 77, fig. 2. 62. MHB, 4:148. 63. Ying Shao 應劭 glosses the “canopy bird” as a “messenger of the celestial god” (pingyi, tianshen shizhe ye 屏翳, 天神使者也). See Sima Qian 司馬遷, Shiji 史記 (Beijing: Zhonghua shuju, 1982): 3060–3061; He, “Cong Changsha,” 157. The bird is also part of the fantastic entourage accompanying Han Wudi’s imaginary flight: “Then, raising His signal flag, He soars aloft, . . . Strikes the canopy bird, Clubs the phoenix” (Sima Xiangru, “The Imperial Park,” in David Knechtges, trans. and annot., Wenxuan, or, Selections of Refined Literature [Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1982–1996], 2:103). 64. The speaker in the “Lisao” describes his imaginary flight to the celestial court: “I asked Heaven’s porter to open up for me; / But he leant across Heaven’s gate and eyed me churlishly” (Qu Yuan, “Lisao,” in Chuci buzhu, 1.29; translation in Hawkes, Songs, 74). 65. Bulling, “The Guide of the Souls Picture,” 169. 66. Qu Yuan asks: “What is the peculiar virtue of the moon, the Brightness of the Night, which causes it to grow once more after its death?” Qu Yuan, “Heavenly Questions,” in Hawkes, Song of the South, 127. 67. Hawkes, Song of the South, 142; Anne Birrell, Chinese Mythology: An Introduction (Baltimore and London: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1993), 163–65. 68. An increasing number of scholars—including Guo Xueren, He Xilin, and others—have identified the figure as Taiyi 太一. See Guo Xueren 郭學仁, “Mawangdui yihao Hanmu bohua renshen shewei shen xinlun 馬王堆一號漢墓帛畫人身 蛇尾神新論,” in Hebeisheng bowuguan, Mawangdui Hanmu yanjiu wenji, 328–333; Guo Xueren, “Mawangdui yihao Hanmu bohua neirong xintan 馬王堆一號漢墓帛 畫内容新探,” Meishu yanjiu 70.2 (1993): 63–67, esp. 64–65; He, “Cong Changsha,” 160–161. For alternative views see Loewe, Ways to Paradise, 57–59. 69. MHB, 4:152; Harper, Medical Literature, 411. 70. Bulling, “The Guide of the Souls Picture,” 169–170. 71. Yang Bojun 楊伯峻, ed., Liezi jishi 列子集釋 (Beijing: Zhonghua shuju, 1979), 83. 72. The eight dots have been identified variously as the mythological ten suns, nine suns, or stars. For a summary of different positions, see Liu Xiaolu 劉曉路, “Zhongguo bohua yanjiu wushi nian 中國帛畫研究50 年,” Zhongguo wenhua

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yanjiu 10.4 (1995): 129–130. The identification of the eight dots as stars is gaining ground. Luo Kun 羅琨 first identified the eight red dots as stars (“Guanyu Mawangdui Hanmu bohua de shangtao 關於馬王堆漢墓帛畫的商討,” in MHY, 279–280). Liu Zongyi 劉宗意 argues that the eight red dots represent the Scorpii, i.e., the constellation comprising the Room (fang), Heart (xin), and Tail (wei). More specifically, the upper four dots represent the four stars of the Room; the lower three stars, the Heart. Liu explains the dot close to the dragon’s tail as the closest of the nine Tail stars. The star has been traditionally identified with the primary consort, so it is fitting for the marquise. See Liu Zongyi, “Mawangdui bohua zhong de bage xiaoyuan shi canglong xingxiang 馬王堆帛畫中的八個小圓是蒼龍星象,” Dongnan wenhua 3 (1997): 106–107. A comparison of the Tomb 1 banner with that of Tomb 3 adds credence to Liu’s argument. The painted banner from Tomb 3, whose occupant was the marquise’s son, shows eighty or so red dots signifying stars, which makes the Tomb 1 painting rather distinct. Its gender specificity is notable. 73. Hawkes, Songs of the South, 127. 74. According to Ying Shao 應劭 (fl. 189–194), Emperor Cheng 成帝 (51–7 B.C.E.; r. 33–7 B.C.E.) of Han is said to have been born in the “painted chamber of the Jia Palace” 甲觀畫堂 (Jiaguan huatang) whose interior walls were adorned with, among other things, a mural of the Mother of Nine Sons (i.e., Mother Star). See Han shu (Beijing: Zhonghua shuju, 1962), 301. 75. “Shiwen,” MHB, 4:90, 146; MGK, 892; Harper, Medical Manuscripts, 391. 76. See the photographic facsimile of the manuscript in MHB, 4:90, 146. 77. MGK, 893, n. 4. The Yufang mijue 玉房祕訣, cited in the medieval Chinese manuscript Yixin fang 醫心方, which has survived in Japan, contains a description of a similar ten-step process. The counterpart to xing 星 therein is rendered as “emission” (xie 瀉). See MGK, 896. 78. “He yin yang,” MHB, 4:155; Harper, Medical Manuscripts, 412–415. 79. “Shiwen,” MHB, 4:147, 152; Harper, Medical Manuscripts, pp. 394, 411. 80. Michael Loewe’s speculation is close to the mark: “There remains one further possibility for which no proof can be adduced, but which would seem to be acceptable in view of the interpretation of the painting as the pilgrim’s progress; that the artist depicted a final stage in the journey of the countess, when she has reached her destination, and that we see her in the company of the hosts of heaven, sloughing off her mortal coil as easily as a snake sheds the skins that he discards” (Ways to Paradise, 59). The strength of Loewe’s insight rests on his taking into account the “pilgrim’s progress,” even though the phrasing “pilgrim” can now be discounted. 81. MHB, 4:151–152; translation based on Harper, Medical Manuscripts, 410–411, with slight modification. Whereas Harper translates tian di ying 天地英 as “blossom under-heaven,” I render it as “blossom between heaven and earth.” 82. Harper, Medical Literature, 127. 83. “Neiye 内業,” Guanzi 管子, in Yingyin Wenyuange siku quanshu 景印文 淵閣四庫全書 (Taipei: Taiwan shangwu yinshuguan, 1983), 729:778. For a recent discussion of the “Neiye” chapter, see Michael Puett, To Becoming a God: Cosmology, Sacrifice, and Self-Divination in Early China (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Asia Center, 2002), 109–117.

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84. CMYH, 1:14. 85. “Yin yang mai sihou 陰陽脈死候,” in MHB, 4:21; MGK, 304–306; translation in Harper, Medical Manuscripts, 219. 86. “Taichan shu 胎產書,” in MHB, 4:136; MGK, 780, 781, n. 10; Harper, Medical Manuscripts, 378. 87. HHJ, 230; translation adapted from Evan Morgan, trans., Tao, the Great Luminant: Essays from Huai Nan Tzu (Shanghai: Kelly and Walsh, 1934), 67; for related passages in classical texts, see MGK, 866. The breathing regimen is also called xuchui 呴吹 in the Mawangdui manuscript “Quegu shiqi 却谷食氣.” See MGK, 822. 88. HHJ, 230; translation adapted from Morgan, Tao, the Great Luminant, 67; for related passages in classical texts, see MGK, 866. 89. Two owls also appear on the west side of the coffin, where they serve the same signifying function. 90. Yin bawei yi zidao xi, han hangxie yi changsheng 引八维以自道(导)兮, 含沆瀣以長生 (“Qijian 七谏,” in Chuci buzhu, 13.250). 91. The term “drifting flow” (hangxie 沆瀣) also appears in the Mawangdui manuscript “Quegu shiqi.” For a glossing of the term, see MGK, 834–836, n. 9; Harper, Medical Literature, 307, n. 1. 92. The Energy-Guiding Diagram (Dao yin tu 道引圖) contains the Merlin pose. See Zhongguo kaogu wenwu zhi mei 中国考古文物之美 (Taipei: Guangfu shuju qiye gufen youxian gongsi, 1994), 8:142–143; MGK, 865; Harper, Medical Manuscripts, 316. 93. Zhangjiashan Hanjian zhenglizu 張家山漢簡整理組, “Zhangjiashan Hanjian Yinshu shiwen 張家山漢簡《引書》釋文,” Wenwu 10 (1990): 82; translation from Harper, Medical Manuscripts, 110. 94. John S. Major, “Characteristics of Late Chu Religion,” in Defining Chu: Image and Reality in Ancient China, ed. Constance A. Cook and John S. Major (Honolulu: University of Hawai‘i Press, 1999), 132. 95. “Quegu shiqi,” in MHB, 4:85; MGK, 846. 96. Harper, Medical Manuscripts, 125–134; Li, Zhongguo fangshu kao, 341–353. 97. “Shiwen,” MHB, 4:147; Harper, Medical Manuscripts, 396. 98. “Quegu shiqi,” in MHB, 4:85; MGK, 832. 99. Wang, “Chu zongmiao bihua chigui yexian tu,” 41–63, esp. 43–51. 100. Even though the bird has increasingly been rhetorically maligned as a figure of bad omen since the Western Zhou, it retains the archaic disposition in the present case in the Chu context. 101. MGK, 849–866; Harper, Medical Manuscripts, 310–327. 102. Ma Rong 馬融, “Changdi fu 長笛賦,” in Wenxuan, comp. Xiao Tong (Shanghai: Shanghai guji, 1986), 18.818; translation in Knechtges, Wenxuan, 3:273. 103. HHJ, 230; translation in Morgan, Tao, the Great Luminant, 67 (emphasis mine); for related passages in classical texts, see MGK, 866. 104. MHB, 4:95; MGK, 861–62. Harper renders it as “Pulling Ham Pain,” Harper, Medical Manuscripts, 315. 105. “Qijian,” in Chuci buzhu, 13.250. The “drifting flow” (hangxie 沆瀣), which also appears in the Mawangdui manuscript “Quegu shiqi,” is the midnight

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air of the north. For glossing of the term, see MGK, 834–836, n. 9; Harper, Medical Manuscripts, 307, n. 1. 106. This eleven-vessel system is slightly different from the twelve-vessel theory in the Huangdi neijing of the first century B.C.E., the earliest received medical text; Harper, Medical Manuscripts, 5. 107. “Maifa 脈法,” MHB, 4:17; MGK, 282–285; translation from Harper, Medical Manuscripts, 214–215. 108. “Serpent turning into fish (she nai hua wei yu, shi wei yu fu 蛇乃化為 魚, 是為魚婦)” (Yuan, Shanhaijing jiaozhu, 16.476). A related passage appears in the “Treatise on Topography” in the Huainanzi; HHJ, 150. For discussion see Yuan, Shanhaijing jiaozhu, 476, n. 4. Feng Hanji 馮漢驥 and other scholars have noted serpents’ association with chthonic energy, procreation, femininity, and female reproductive organs. See Liu Dunyuan 劉敦願, “Mawangdui Xi Han bohua zhong de ruogan shehua wenti 馬王堆西漢帛畫中的若干神化問題,” in MHY, 284; Liu, Shiluo de tianshu, 318–321. 109. Guanzi, 16.270; Harper, Medical Manuscripts, 394, n. 2. 110. Sofukawa Hiroshi 曽布川寬, Konronzan e no sho¯ sen: Kodai Chu¯gokujin ga egaita shigo no sekai 崑崙山への昇仙: 古代中国人が描いた死後の世界 (Tokyo: Chu¯o¯ ko¯ronsha, 1981), 33–44. 111. “Shiwen,” MHB, 4:146–147; MGK, 901–905; translation in Harper, Medical Manuscripts, 394. 112. Mu tianzi zhuan 穆天子傳, in Han Wei Liuchao biji xiaoshuo daguan 漢魏六朝筆記小説大觀, ed. Wang Genlin 王根林 et al. (Shanghai: Shanghai guji, 1999), 3.14; Harper, Chinese Medical Manuscripts, 394, n. 3. For various classical sources concerning the “sweet wellspring” and the “blue-jade pond” associated with Mount Kunlun, see MGK, 931, n. 2. 113. Edward Schafer glosses the term bijing 碧津 (“cyan exudates”) as saliva, an allusion to the blue-gem pool at Mount Kunlun (“Wu Yun’s ‘Cantos on Pacing the Void,’ ” Harvard Journal of Asiatic Studies 41 [1981]: 377–415; reference is to 405, n. 110; Harper, Medical Manuscripts, 394, n. 3). 114. CMYH, 1:27. 115. “Shiwen,” MHB, 4:148; MGK, 930–931; translation in Harper, Medical Manuscripts, 398.

THREE

CONCEPTS OF DEATH AND THE AFTERLIFE REFLECTED IN NEWLY DISCOVERED TOMB OBJECTS AND TEXTS FROM HAN CHINA Jue Guo

Historical studies of death and the afterlife in China agree that the entrance of Buddhism at the end of the Eastern Han (25–220 C.E.) significantly changed the picture of the afterlife in early China. Buddhism’s introduction of the concepts of heavens and hells, as rewards or punishments for earthly conduct, resulted in a shift in Chinese worldviews in the first few centuries of the common era. However, one general misconception about the Buddhist influence is that there was no concept of the afterlife in China until Buddhism introduced one. The Qing scholar Gu Yanwu 顧炎武 (1613–1682) and the Republican period scholar Hu Shi 胡適 (1891–1962) are two well-known representatives of this radical view. In an essay titled “Mount Tai Regulates Ghosts” (“Taishan zhigui 泰山治鬼”), Gu suggests that the concept of ghosts was introduced at the end of the Han dynasty, and the idea of “hell” (diyu 地獄) originated in the literary piece “Summons of the Soul” (“Zhaohun 招魂”) by Song Yu 宋玉 and was then developed in Wei and Jin times by being attached to Buddhist texts.1 Hu Shi, although he modified his views later in life, claimed that Buddhism brought the concept of heavens and hells to China.2 Joseph Needham (1900–1995) is another adherent to the theory that China did not have a concept of the “other world” prior to the spread of

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Buddhism. In responding to a distinction that David Hawkes made in his translations of the Songs of the South (Chuci 楚辭), particularly in poems such as “Far-off Journey” (“Yuanyou 遠游”), Needham comments in a note that “if one bears in mind the conceptions of different peoples (Indo-Iranian, Christian, Islamic, etc.) there was no such thing as an ‘other world’ in ancient Chinese thought at all—no heaven or hell, no creator God, and no expected end of the universe once it had emerged from primeval chaos. All was natural, and within Nature. Of course, after the permeation of Buddhism, ‘the case was altered.’ ”3 Gu and Hu are right insofar as the Chinese conceptions of heaven and hell changed with the advent of Buddhism, but they perhaps were using too narrow a concept of afterlife in general. Needham’s note, also, has to be put into perspective to understand what is implied in his definition of “other world.” In his comparison of Eastern and Western ideas about the afterlife, particularly Chinese and Hellenistic ones, “this-world” and “otherworld” are two labels Needham regularly applies. Specifically, he argues that the idea that there were natural strata of possible abodes for the dead came earlier than the ethically dualistic polarization of paradise for the virtuous and hell for the wicked. He calls the first conception of the afterlife “thisworldly” and the second “other-worldly,”4 and concludes that “by and large, Chinese culture was fundamentally attached to all this-worldly levels.”5 As Yu Ying-shih 余英時 has pointed out, Needham’s comment on the lack of a concept of “other world” comes out of a comparative perspective, and the conclusion by itself might be an exaggeration based on a narrow definition of the afterlife; as it stands, his view has been contradicted by historical and archaeological evidence.6 In a recent study, Stephen R. Bokenkamp clearly expresses a similar objection. Although focusing on the concept of rebirth in the fifth-century C.E. Lingbao 靈寶 Daoist scriptures, he finds it oversimplified and therefore problematic to suggest that “the Chinese had no notion of the fate of their dead.” On the contrary, he argues that “they had several conflicting and confused notions,” and only after “Buddhism arrived, with its detailed cosmologies and precise descriptions of rebirth and the afterlife, [did] the Chinese, lacking more persuasive explanations, [accept] these.” Further, he warns that the danger of such an explanation is that it puts us in a situation wherein “we find ourselves comparing incommensurables—relative silence on the subject of the dead before 200 C.E. and garrulousness after.”7 Two points here are worth noting and relevant to our present study. The first is the observation that multiple notions of death and the afterlife existed in pre-Buddhist China. Although the following discussion will show that such notions might have been “conflicting and confused,” it is nevertheless accurate to say there were views of the afterlife in preBuddhist China. The second point is the contrast between the scarcity

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and abundance of materials on this topic before and after the entrance of Buddhism. Bokenkamp frames this contrast in terms of the availability of explicit explanations; in his own words, “ancient Chinese mortuary cults, with their lavish and painstaking care of the dead, apparently left no detailed records explaining why the Chinese did such things.”8 The lack of a Chinese Book of the Dead that might provide explicit textual explanations for burial practices makes the search to find alternative approaches to such inquiries about early China challenging, as well as necessary. Fortunately, not only do pre-Buddhist Chinese literary writings and philosophical works show a continuous interest in and devotion to topics concerning death, burials, and afterworlds, but archaeological discoveries, particularly in the past four decades or so, provide further details of the actual practices. These details, which have been absent from the transmitted textual tradition, make it possible for us to reconstruct concepts of the afterlife and practices surrounding them in early China. The present study focuses on the Han, a period in which ideas and practices from the previous millennium were synthesized and developed on the eve of the entrance of Buddhism. The materials are mainly from archaeological finds, and hence a major goal of this chapter is to add new perspectives derived from excavated tomb objects and tomb texts. In particular, we will introduce a previously unknown genre called gaodi 告地 (“informing-the-earth,” i.e., underground) texts. Instead of posing a single “standard” reading of the concept of death and the afterlife in Han China, this study uses tomb objects and texts to focus a discussion of both the elite and popular concepts of death and the afterlife and argues that a plural set of beliefs underlie the practices reflected in the excavated Han tombs.

TWO QUESTIONS AND TWO MODELS Yu Ying-shih notably suggested that “Chinese imagination of the afterlife did not become fully developed until the Han period.”9 In the twenty years that have passed since the publication of his study, materials unearthed from pre-Han tombs have shown that probably as early as the fourth century B.C.E., a clear idea about of the abode of the dead had appeared.10 Yu’s point might be rephrased to say that the Han dynasty had the most diverse set of views on death and representations of the afterlife in pre-Buddhist China. In a thorough and careful study of burial and related ideas about death, Poo Mu-chou 蒲慕州 surveyed the transmitted and excavated literature of the pre-Qin and Han period. Poo points out that one common feature about texts from different schools is that they did not “discuss such problems as whether there is a life after death, or whether the way people treated the dead would affect the condition of the dead in the life hereafter.”11 In other words, in the transmitted literature treating death and afterlife,

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the discussions were carried out on a more abstract level. Philosophical speculation and argumentation about the nature of death, its sociopolitical and moral significance, and economic effects of rites de passage around death were all concerned with the effect that death would have on the living. Issues concerning what would happen to the dead, where they went, and, finally, what the afterlife—if there was one—was like are left out of the discussion. These concrete questions are not explicitly posed, if not completely overlooked, in the vast literature Poo has surveyed. Fortunately, archaeological discoveries have helped paint a more complete picture of the afterworld, with many details obtained from excavated tomb texts and burial objects. Yu’s and Poo’s inquiries give rise to the two questions this chapter will use as points of departure for a general exploration of death and the afterlife in early China. First, where is/are the abode or abodes of the dead? Second, what is the nature of these places? Previous studies have suggested two models to address these questions: a journey model and a tomb model.

AFTERLIFE JOURNEYS: GOING BEYOND THE TOMB The first dominant model of the afterlife may be called a journey model. Specifically, this model suggests that after death, though the physical body is buried in the tomb, the tomb is not the final residence for the deceased—it is only a starting point or a transit station, depending on which of the different theories within this model one follows; the dead then take a journey beyond the tomb to an external land, whether an upper heaven, immortal paradise, or the land of the dead. One difficulty posed by this model is that the physical burial of the body in the tomb apparently runs counter to the idea that the dead reside somewhere else, beyond the tomb. Most studies relying on this model are based on a dualistic scheme of vital energy and assume that there is a separation between two types of souls, the hun 魂 soul and the po 魄 soul, at the moment of death. The earliest example of po and hun as essences associated with life and death can be traced back to the sixth century B.C.E.12 This scheme continued in the Han as well. As two kinds of life energy, hun and po—associated with the yin and yang attributes—made it possible for the journey model to solve the discrepancy in terms of residence of the dead. Po, associated with yin, an earthly energy, may stay with the body in the tomb or go to some subterranean world; the hun, a yang and spiritual soul, goes beyond the tomb to reach its final and permanent destination.13 Within the journey model paradigm, different accounts identify particular places that the dead might go. The T-shaped silk painting from Mawangdui 馬王堆 Tomb 1 has been at the center of scholarly discussions of the motif of traveling in the afterlife.14 This remarkable painting was

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found in the innermost (i.e., the fourth) coffin in Tomb 1 at Mawangdui, Hunan Province, in 1972. The tomb occupant was identified as the wife of Marquis Dai 軑, Lady Xinzhui 辛追 of the state of Changsha 長沙國. This tomb is one of the three found at this family cemetery, and according to a dated wooden tablet found in Tomb 3, presumably the tomb of the marquis’ son, the date of the burials was no later than 168 B.C.E.15 This painting runs about 2.05 meters in length, with a width of 92 centimeters at the upper part and 47.7 centimeters at the bottom part. For purposes of analysis, scholars have divided the painting into three parts along its vertical axis: the horizontal section of the crossbar of the T; the upper part of the vertical shaft of the T; and the lower part at the base of the T. However, the identification of each of these three sections and the possible nature and function of this painting have been the subject of an intense debate. In Ways to Paradise (1979), Michael Loewe presents a prompt and comprehensive study of Mawangdui Tomb 1 and this painting in particular. As the title of the book suggests, Loewe views the painting as a perfect example of the afterlife journey and the pursuit of immortality in Han China. He identifies the vertical parts (the top and the bottom together) as a scene depicting “the road taken by the soul to its destined abode; and this road passes through the magic and mystery of the Island of P’englai, the Vase.”16 The upper horizontal part is taken as “the destination to which the soul was successfully escorted, the world of paradise.”17 In other words, the whole painting visualizes an ascending procession taken by the deceased countess to her final destination in the afterlife: “paradise,” in Loewe’s terminology. In contrast to the transmitted literature concerning the afterlife, including poems such as “The Great Summons” (“Dazhao 大招”) and “Summons of the Soul” in the Chuci, which function as a warning to the soul to stop it from going into an unknown afterworld, the function of this tomb painting was to guide the tomb’s occupant through this afterlife journey and escort her to her final abode, according to Loewe.18 Going back to our original questions regarding the abode of the dead and the nature of this abode (i.e., what the afterlife world is like), Loewe’s study provides general information but no further details, especially concerning the image of the afterlife. Loewe sketches out a desirable paradise that can be reached through a journey, which connects well with ideas about immortality that prevailed in the Han, but he leaves open the question of what this paradise is like. Yu Ying-shih has a rather different take on the same Mawangdui painting. Simply put, he reads this painting in light of a Han ritual called fu 復, the “summons of the soul,” which was the first ritual performed for a person who had recently died in Han ritual texts.19 In light of this ritual, Yu does not split the top horizontal part from the top vertical part of the

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painting; instead, he sees them as a complete scene depicting the fu ritual performed for the deceased countess. Following Yu Weichao 俞偉超,20 Yu Ying-shih also suggests that the two male figures above the old lady, identified as the deceased countess, are probably “summoners” up on a roof calling the soul back.21 Loewe’s study focuses on providing a detailed summary of each image on the painting; Yu expends much more space and effort discussing the function of this painting and his identification of the scene as the performance of a fu ritual. After this ritual was completed and the calling of the soul had failed, the dead person would have been moved to his or her bed and covered with a burial shroud called a hu or fu 幠.22 What draws Yu’s attention is this burial shroud. In the inventory of grave goods from Tomb 1, there is a record of an item called feiyi 非衣, described as being twelve chi 尺 (approximately 2.77 meters) long. Combining the textual and archaeological evidence,23 Yu suggests that this T-shaped painting is likely the actual burial shroud used in the fu ritual. Yu reads this Mawangdui painting as a kind of fossil that preserves the Han fu ritual in a vivid form and, more importantly, reinforces beliefs concerning death and the afterlife behind this practice in the Han. Yu points out that the practice was based on the belief surrounding “summoning the hun to reunite with the po” (zhaohun fupo 招魂復魄).24 In other words, this ritual implies that people believed that there was a separation between the hun and po at the moment of death—while the po stays with the physical body the hun goes wandering—but this separation was also believed to have been temporary, and the fu ritual was meant to call back the hun to revive the newly dead. Once the fu ritual was believed to have failed to call back the hun, the newly dead was considered to have begun his or her afterlife journey. Yu suggests that prior to the arrival of Buddhism, which associates ethical behavior with journeys to heaven and hell, there were dual value-neutral abodes for the dead that matched the dualistic conception of the hun and po: a heavenly world above and an underworld below. At death, the hun and po go their separate ways and travel to their different destinations.25 Yu also discusses a crucial transformation in Han views about the afterlife that took place around the reign of Emperor Wu 武 (140–87 B.C.E.). The cult of immortals known as xian 仙 provided another way of imagining a life after death.26 This cult of immortals changed the balance between the dual abodes of dead. According to the Scripture of Great Peace (Taipingjing 太平 經), the upper heaven became exclusively a land for immortals, and so the hun needed to find a new place to reside. Beginning around the first century B.C.E., this new abode was thought to be located on Mount Tai. Accordingly, the po, instead of going to the general underworld, was relocated specifically to a place called Haoli 蒿里 at the foot of Mount Tai. A feature that Mount

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Tai and Haoli share—but previous versions of heaven and the underworld did not—is a distinctively bureaucratic quality. For example, Mount Tai had an anthropomorphic ruler, the Lord of Taishan Prefecture (Taishan fujun 泰山府君), who was said to be the grandson of the Heavenly God (Tiandi zhisun 天帝之孫) and who was assigned to regulate the dead.27 We will come back to this point in the next section when we discuss some newly discovered materials and see how they support the picture of an afterlife with its own bureaucracy. As prominent and important as the Mawangdui painting is in the history of early Han arts and religion, this work is not the only tomb object on the theme of an afterlife journey.28 A similar theme is found in the fresco on the ceiling of the Bu Qianqiu 卜千秋 tomb discovered in Luoyang 洛陽 in 1976.29 In the fresco, the couple that occupied the tomb ride on extraordinary animals (a three-headed bird and a flying snake) and are accompanied by guardian animals to reach their final destination, possibly the immortal land where the Queen Mother of the West (Xiwangmu 西王母) resides.30 Unlike the Mawangdui painting and the Bu Qianqiu fresco, which center on an explicit depiction of the tomb occupant’s journey, many other Han tombs use chariots, both actual ones and images of them and their movement, as central objects to symbolize the happening of an afterlife journey. As Wu Hung has observed, chariots have a dual function—they represent both actual events in the funerary ritual and movement through time and space in the imaginary afterlife—and so they “link life and afterlife into a continuous metaphorical journey, in which death is conceived as a liminal experience.”31 Though the actual funerary ritual procession is a significant component of the study of the chariots and their images in the Han tomb arts, what interests us more in the present study is the second function, that is, the symbolism of the chariot in the afterlife. An excellent representation of chariot symbolism in the postmortem journey is found in the stone carvings inside the Eastern Han Cangshan 蒼 山 tomb in Shandong 山東 Province, dated to 151 C.E., according to an inscription in the tomb.32 These images were engraved on the east and west sides of the walls of the tomb chamber. Based on the accompanying inscription, Wu identified the picture on the west wall as representing the actual procession of the funeral crossing the Wei River, which he suggests had become a general symbol of death in Han tombs, serving to separate life and afterlife. The funerary procession is shown to have arrived at a ting 亭 station, the main chamber symbolizing the tomb, a counterpart of a guesthouse for the living. The entrance to the tomb indicates that the dead will be buried and therefore live in an underground home for all eternity. The first part of what Wu calls a “bipartite journey” ends with the burial. The second part of the journey taken by the soul of the dead is shown in the third carving on

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the east wall. One noteworthy point is that the direction of the procession in the third carving is completely opposite to that of the first two: instead of eastward, chariots went westward, toward the image of the Queen Mother of the West located on a column supporting the door lintel.33 The Cangshan tomb expresses a mixed attitude toward the abode of the dead. On one hand, in explaining the second carving on the west wall, Wu suggests that “the deceased will live in his underground home for eternity,” which implies that the tomb is the eternal residence for the dead; on the other, he identifies the third carving on the east wall as representing a journey taken by the soul of the dead and specifically notes that the direction of the journey is to the west, where the Queen Mother of the West resides. One way to explain this apparent inconsistency is to invoke the theory of separation of the hun and po; the hun journeys to the immortal land while the po and the physical body remain in the tomb as their final residence. Another possibility is that the apparent discrepancy is not a result of the modern scholar’s interpretation but reflects a tension among the tomb objects under discussion. Wu actually works in this direction in his discussion of the Mawangdui painting. We will come back to this point as well as the composite nature of tomb objects as reflecting divergent beliefs and practices concerning the afterlife in the Han. In a recent study on the death and afterlife journey, Lai Guo-long also examines newly excavated tomb materials and proposes what can be considered a revised theory of the afterlife journey and the relationship between tombs and external abodes of the dead. His focus is on a text from Jiudian Tomb 56, Jiangling, Hubei, dated to 316 B.C.E., which can be considered an incantation template for specialists to offer prayers for the war dead.34 Lai argues against the theory that the tomb is the final and permanent home for the dead; instead he applies the journey model, suggesting that the deceased is depicted traveling to the final destination outside the tomb in the wilds. Therefore, he argues that the tomb is only a “way station” to prepare the dead for a dangerous journey in the afterlife, and that the burial goods—including texts and particularly almanac-like “daybooks” (rishu 日書), which offer guidance on how to choose an auspicious time and avoid an inauspicious one—are “travel paraphernalia” for the dead. Lai’s reading also sheds light on certain ritual practices such as the “Pace of Yu”35 in a funerary context that function as road rituals or travel maps to guide the soul of the dead through an afterlife journey.36 We can see from our above discussion that the journey model has been gradually refined. In its early form, it focused on one tomb object with themes related to traveling; it later came to include and arrange various tomb texts and objects to create a coherent and systematic theory relating to the afterlife journey. The later, revised model also indirectly answers the

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questions that proponents of the tomb model (which we will discuss in the following section) have put forward to challenge the journey model.

REMAINING IN THE TOMB: AN UNDERGROUND HOME FOR THE DEAD The second model proposes that the tomb, where the dead individual is buried, is the final abode for the deceased and that the afterlife starts there. Studies of burials that pay particular attention to tomb structure and grave goods show that a significant change occurred during the Han. In terms of physical structure, Han tombs developed not only a vertical-pit, wooden outer-coffin (shuxue muguomu 豎穴木槨墓) with new elements such as actual doors and windows, but also a new type of construction, the brick-chamber tomb (zhuanshimu 磚室墓). Both inventions suggest a trend to make the tomb resemble a living person’s house and provide the dead with a familiar environment in his or her afterlife.37 The change in architectural structure was not the only one to imply a belief in the tomb as a permanent afterlife abode. Various grave goods— particularly the increased number of representations of daily-use objects such as miniatures of granary and wells, cooking utensils, figurines of attendants and servants, personal items, and entertainment objects—are also evidence of the important role that the tomb plays in the afterlife. By contrast, the bronzes and ritual objects that used to be the central burial goods in the Shang and Western Zhou dramatically decreased in number, though they did not completely disappear. If we take the change in tomb structure as evidence of an intention to give the dead a similar environment in the afterlife to the one in which they lived in their former lives, the daily-use grave goods were probably intended to provide them with the necessities required to live in an underground home, the tomb.38 Turning back to Mawangdui for a moment, we may see how the tomb model lends a different interpretation of the same theme that the journey model describes as an afterlife voyage. Based on two methodological hypotheses—(1) “the painting, rather than being an independent ‘work of art,’ was part of the whole tomb”; and (2) “the tomb, rather than being a ready-made structure, took shape during a ritual process”—Wu Hung explores the internal relationship between tomb objects, including the painting, tomb structure, and ritual sequence.39 Instead of giving an image-by-image reading of the previously discussed Mawangdui painting, Wu pays more attention to different sections of the painting, their corresponding connections to the tomb structure in which it was buried, and their sequence in the funerary ritual. From top to bottom, Wu divides the painting into four sections. The top and the bottom sections are, respectively, the heaven and the

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underground world, and together they form a microcosm. The portrait in the center of the second level from the top is not an imitation of the countess’ likeness in her former life but a representation of her in her afterlife. The object on a flat, low stand in the middle of the second level from the bottom is the shi 屍 corpse covered by clothes and shrouds, along with the food and wine that were offered to the deceased. This depicts the scene happening in the mourning hall according to the Han ritual text.40 Correspondingly, the countess was buried in a four-layered inner coffin (guan 棺), and Wu suggests that these layers also form a complete cosmos for the dead in the afterlife. The outermost coffin was painted in pure black to symbolize a permanent separation between the dead and the living; the second coffin is also black but with images and patterns of protective and auspicious animals that might signify that the dead has crossed the boundary of death and entered the realm of the underground world, “a world which is guarded by the ‘protective images’ and blessed by the ‘auspicious images.’ ”41 The third coffin was painted in red, the color of full yang, and symbolizes the realm of immortals; the innermost coffin was identified by Wu as the corpse (jiu 柩).42 The four layers of coffins together represent an ideal cosmos where “Lady Dai would ‘inhabit’ these different realms, so that she would be free from evil influences, and that she would attain immortality.”43 By suggesting that the tomb itself has already formed a complete cosmos, Wu poses a direct objection to the journey model. In his opinion, the fundamental belief that the Mawangdui painting represents is that the tomb is the “happy home” for the dead. He draws a parallel between the afterlife and this world, arguing that the tomb is the safest place for the dead in the same way that the home is the safest place for the living. Heaven was in contrast considered a dangerous place, as described in the “Summons of the Soul” poem. Wu summarizes the painting’s central theme: “in a cosmic context it depicts death, and conveys the hope of the living, that after her burial Lady Dai would resume her existence in her underground ‘permanent home.’ ”44 A second challenge that Han tombs pose for the journey model is the presence of grave goods within them.45 Not only were such tombs constructed in the form of an underground house, but they were also filled with various kinds of items for the dead to consume in his or her afterlife. Anna Seidel in particular objects to Loewe’s hypothesis that burial artifacts including paintings such the Mawangdui one, TLV pattern mirrors, and objects with a motif of the Queen Mother of the West express a wish to live in a paradise, in other words, an ultimate goal to live beyond the tomb. A more general challenge to the journey model that Seidel expresses relates to interpreting the symbolism of funeral objects: “In fact, the majority of Han funeral objects were not symbolic roadsigns for a further journey to a paradise but artifacts reproducing and symbolizing an afterlife in the tomb itself which was first of all a residence.”46

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The two models nevertheless can be reconciled. As we saw in our discussion of the journey model, one way to mediate between the interpretations is to argue that, based on the separation between hun and po at the moment of death, the grave goods are put into a tomb to ensure that the po, which goes to the grave with the body, is well supplied and preserved in a comfortable existence.47 In a tomb model such as Wu’s, which presents a complete cosmic afterlife world for the dead, different realms of the dead were put together in one tomb: “the universe, the underground world, the immortal paradise, and the underground household.” However, the internal connections between them are by no means explicit and therefore it is difficult to be certain about which realm was the one in which the deceased was supposed to reside in his or her afterlife. This layout, confusing as it might seem to be, functionally provided people in the Han with almost all the answers they needed to the question of an afterlife abode. The Mawangdui tomb, as a representative example, signifies “a profound impulse to synthesize divergent beliefs into a single mortuary setting” by “multiplying the layers of a funerary structure without establishing logical connections between them,” therefore resulting in an essentially multilayered tomb. It is these multiple answers that allowed people in the Han the most freedom of imagination concerning the afterlife compared with people of other eras.48 The discussion so far may lead us to conclude that it is misleading to use a single theory to explain the features of all Han tombs and that we should shift the focus of our discussion to the possibility of different and irreconcilable views of death and the afterlife coexisting comfortably in the Han. Adopting such an approach, the most recent discoveries of a new genre of tomb texts might shed new light on Han views of the afterlife world and how they were reflected in practice.

A NEW GENRE: RITUAL COMMUNICATION AMONG DIFFERENT REALMS The pluralism that the Mawangdui tomb highlights is not only valuable for reading one specific tomb and its interred objects; methodologically, it can be used to understand the multidimensional and diverse nature of tomb materials and their related beliefs and practices. In the Han, when the regionally distinct practices of the previous millennium were being consolidated and when distinctions between the elite and the popular were being reformulated, each burial reveals a unique combination of elements from different religious traditions and practices. As we have briefly suggested above, the different theories presented by the journey model and tomb model are not mutually exclusive; rather, this plurality of views should be seen as an unavoidable result of the multilayered beliefs that coexisted during the four centuries of Han rule.

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Though the journey and tomb models disagree on the location of the final abode, they agree that the dead are separated from the living and live in a different geographical domain or realm. An important aspect of this picture, and one that has not been adequately emphasized in either model, is the communication between different realms. The tomb objects available to earlier scholars have permitted only a partial picture of the afterlife world in the Han, and, in that picture, the role of the living and the interactions between the two worlds are not given enough emphasis. Fortunately, a newly discovered genre of tomb texts, “informing-the-underground” (gaodi 告地), which record ritual communications among different realms of being, supplies another picture of Han concepts of the afterlife. In order to introduce this new genre of tomb texts, let us step back chronologically to look at its relevant precursors. Key to this new genre is the division of space into different realms. Geographically, the cosmos can be divided into three realms: upper heaven, the earth, and the underground. One observation that early records make, almost universally, is that the living occupy the earth. Since the Shang, upper heaven and its constellations have been reserved for spirits and ancestors, particularly those of the ruling family. The common dead, it seems, are left with the underground as their place of residence. Where exactly did the dead go below ground? Searching through the vast pre-Qin and Han literature, two locations emerge: “Yellow Springs” (huangquan 黃泉) and the “Dark City” (youdu 幽都). Interestingly, both these names have evolved from originally being neutral geographical terms to denoting the underground world that hosts the dead. This transition was finalized in the Han, and—more importantly—the idea of an underground community of the dead was well developed in the Han, in a distinctively bureaucratic sense, as we shall see in the following discussion of the informing-the-underground texts.49 The different realms of being in the cosmos are not isolated from one another; rather, they are actively in communication. Shang oraclebone inscriptions preserve the earliest records of communication between the Shang people, especially the royal family, and Shangdi 上帝 (God on High) as well as other ancestral spirits. Yet no oracle-bone records have been found that mention communication with the underground world in the Shang era. Records of such communication only appeared during the Warring States period. In 1987 a set of fifty-four divinatory and sacrificial bamboo slips, dating from 318 to 316 B.C.E., was found at Baoshan 包山, Hubei Province. The slips record the divinatory and sacrificial procedures performed on behalf of the tomb occupant, Shao Tuo 邵熲, regarding his political prospects, service to the king as Minister on the Left of the state of Chu 楚, and his physical condition, particularly regarding illness. Prayers to various spirits and follow-up sacrifices prescribed by diviners were addressed to ancestors and deities as a way to communicate with the spirit world on

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behalf of the inquirer. Among the deities that were often addressed together with Shao Tuo’s ancestors in such communications were the Master of Fate (Siming 司命)50 and the Lord of the Earth (Dizhu 地主),51 who played important roles in determining people’s health and life spans. This is also the first time that the authority of the “Earth” (i.e., the underground world) was mentioned and the earliest example of communication with the underground world. However, like the oracle-bone inscriptions, the slips do not contain any explicit evidence showing that there existed a hierarchy among the spirits and deities in a bureaucratic sense, even though a hierarchy in terms of religious authority among the spirits and deities is implied.52 The clearest example of bureaucratic communication with the underground world is found in another text from the late Warring States, unearthed at Fangmatan 放馬灘 Tomb 1 in Gansu 甘肅 Province in 1986. The Fangmatan text concerns a man named Dan 丹 who stabbed another person and then committed suicide. Nonetheless, Dan still received the punishment of being exposed in the marketplace for his crime before his body was buried. He eventually returned to life three years after his death; his resurrection was gained through the effort of a declaration written by an official to the Scribe of the Master of Fate (Simingshi 司命史).53 As Donald Harper has pointed out, “Between the Baoshan divination record and the Fangmatan account we have evidence of religion in the process of change. The structure of the pantheon, which was once defined by a sacrificial cycle, was being reformulated along bureaucratic lines, and the old style of divination and sacrifice was making room for new bureaucratic forms of communication.”54 The Fangmatan account forecasts a new type of communication specifically between the human realm and the underground world through a bureaucratic form, a “declaration” (gao 告) for the sake of the deceased. However, the single Fangmatan account provides only one example of communication with a bureaucratic underground. It also leaves open other questions that relate to a more complete understanding of the afterlife world, such as what kind of official documents were used and what the function of such communication was. Fortunately, the “informing-theunderground” texts excavated in the past three decades have answered some of these questions, allowing us to better understand the nature of this type of communication and furthering our knowledge of popular religious beliefs and practices, particularly concerning death and the afterlife in Han China. Pioneering studies by Anna Seidel, Terry F. Kleeman, and Donald Harper have paid attention to the bureaucratic aspect of the communication among different realms. Seidel, in her study of funerary texts, comments on a wooden tablet with inscriptions found in the tomb inventory of Mawangdui Tomb 3, writing that it functions as the means for communication between “human officials and their counterparts in what appears to be already a subterranean spirit administration.”55 Mainly examining land contracts and

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tomb-quelling texts (zhenmuwen 鎮墓文), Kleeman also treats the communication between human and underground bureaucracies.56 For his part, Harper not only points out the bureaucratic characteristic of the communication between the human realm and the underground world represented by the informing-the-underground texts but also names them “memoranda.”57 Informing-the-underground texts have been found mainly in Western Han tombs in Hubei, Hunan, and Jiangsu 江蘇. Regionally, these areas all belonged to the state of Chu before the Qin and Han unification. The earliest presence of this genre of tomb text was from a 2007 excavation at Jingzhou 荊州, Hubei. Archaeologically designated as Xiejiaqiao 謝家橋 Tomb 1, it yielded an informing-the-underground text that dated to 183 B.C.E. The latest one, Huchang 胡場 Tomb 5 (71 B.C.E.), was discovered in Hanjiang 邗 江, Jiangsu. The other six are Gaotai 高臺 Tomb 18 (173 B.C.E.), Jiangling, Hubei; Mawangdui 馬王堆 Tomb 3 (168 B.C.E.), Changsha, Hunan; Maojiayuan 毛家園 Tomb 1 (168 B.C.E.), Jiangling, Hubei; Fenghuangshan 鳳凰山 Tombs 168 (167 B.C.E.) and 10 (153 B.C.E.), Jiangling, Hubei; and Kongjiapo 孔家坡 Tomb 8 (142 B.C.E.), Suizhou 隨州, Hubei.58 These informing-the-underground texts are highly formulaic. They generally have four basic elements: the precise date, the document sender’s identity, the deceased’s identity, and the intended recipient. Some also have other components, such as a list of grave goods including names of servants who supposedly accompanied the deceased in the transition to the afterlife world and can be considered as a form or a part of the tomb inventory. In the following section, we will use the text from Gaotai Tomb 18 as an example to illustrate such texts’ basic formulaic elements.59 Four wooden tablets dating to 173 B.C.E. were discovered in Gaotai Tomb 18 (M18 in the site report) in 1992. When these four tablets were originally excavated, they were stacked and labeled as A, B, C, and D, or jia 甲, yi 乙, bing 丙, and ding 丁. The text reads as follows: M18:35-甲: 安都 江陵丞印 M18:35-乙（正面）: 七年十月丙子朔【庚子】中鄉起敢言之新安大 女燕自言與大奴甲乙[大]婢妨徙安都謁告安都受 【名】數書到爲報敢言之 十月庚子江陵龍氏丞敬移安都丞 / 亭手 M18:35-乙 （背面）：產手 M18:35-丙（正面）： 新安户人大女燕关内侯寡 大奴甲 大奴乙 大婢妨 家優不算不顯 M18:35-丁： 壺一雙 髹杯二雙一奇 盛一雙 閜一雙 鉈一雙 椑匾二雙

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Figure 21. Plate 34 in the Jingzhou Gaotai QinHanmu, ed., Hubeisheng Jingzhou bowuguan, Kexue chubanshe, 2000. Image courtesy of Beijing: Kexue chubanshe.

檢一合 五角囊一 卮一合 黃金囊一 畫杯三雙 脯一束 M18:35-A: Andu Seal of Assistant of Jiangling M18:35-B (front): In the seventh year, the tenth month in which the first day was bingzi, [on the gengzi day,] Qi of Zhong Township respectfully report this: elder woman Yan of Xin’an herself submitted [the application] that she, accompanied by senior servants A and B, and [senior] maidservant Fang, move to Andu. [I] inform [you, Underground Assistant of] Andu and [ask you to] receive the names and the number [of items]. [When] this document arrives, report [to your superior]. Respectfully report [by Qi, i.e., the end of the report].

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In the tenth month, on the gengzi day, the Assistant of Jiangling, Long, respectfully transfer [this document] to the [Underground] Assistant of Andu. Handled by Ting. M18:35-B (back): Handled by Chan. M18:35-C: Xin’an registered resident, elder woman Yan, widow of the Marquis Within the Pass Senior servant A Senior servant B Senior maidservant Fang The household [received] preference [and] should not be counted and [considered] lavish [to pay taxes] M18:35-D: Pot: one pair Maroon-lacquered cup: two pairs and one odd Food container: one pair Large cup: one pair Ladle: one pair Oval-shaped plate: two pairs Wrapper: one set Five-pointed bag: one Wine server: one set Gold bag: one Painted cup: three pairs Dry meat: one bundle (1) The date. Most informing-the-underground texts have a precise date, which is usually a combination of year, month (most of them point out that it was a month beginning with a certain day), and day. It is not clear to what this date was referring. Three hypotheses are proposed: the death date of the deceased, the burial date, or the date that the document was issued. For instance, the date of the text from Huchang Tomb 5 is the twelfth month, which was in the winter; however, remains of some summer fruits, such as watermelon and sweet melon, have been found in the tomb. It is therefore more likely that the date was the death date of the tomb occupant or the issue date of the text rather than the burial date. (2) The document sender. The voice of an informing-the-underground text appears to be that of a living person,60 in contrast with those of tombquelling texts that prevailed from the Eastern Han onward, which appear to be of a specialist speaking for the envoy of the Heavenly Emperor (Tiandishizhe 天帝使者). An example of the voice of a tomb-quelling text is from the Zhang Shujing tomb-quelling pot (Zhang Shujing zhenmupen 張叔敬鎮墓盆) excavated in 1935 and dated to 173 C.E.61 The writer of an informing-the-underground text was usually a person in a government office, though the ranks of these officials vary by text. The fact that such officials were familiar with the formulas of official documents has led to the hypothesis that informing-the-underground texts are imitations of official letters between offices in the living world.62 (3) The deceased. One noteworthy aspect of these informing-theunderground texts is that the name of the deceased was usually given in combination with his or her noble rank—if there was one—and the name

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of his or her home village. The Han dynasty registration system required people to register their hometown in detail down to the village (li 里) level. This characteristic lends some support to the theory mentioned previously that informing-the-underground texts imitate regular official documents in a simplified way, but it specifically points to the theory that they function as certificates for the deceased to register with the underground administration. With respect to the social status of the deceased, among all eight informingthe-underground texts discussed here, it seems that these texts were generally part of the burials of lower-middle-class to middle-class officials, nobles, or wealthy landowners in the Western Han.63 (4) The intended recipient. On one level, the identity of the recipient of the informing-the-underground texts is a crucial concern because the purpose of writing the text is to convey information to that recipient. Among these eight informing-the-underground texts, the recipient was always an underground official such as Court Secretary in Charge of Burial (Zhuzang langzhong 主葬郎中) or an “Underground Assistant” (Dixiacheng 地下丞). In some cases the recipient was a higher-rank official in the underground administration system, such as the Lord in Charge of Burial (Zhuzangjun 主葬君), Earth Lord (Tuzhu 土主), or Underground Lord (Dixiazhu 地下主). This has given rise to the hypothesis that the informing-the-underground texts imitated regular documents in the living world mainly because, in the minds of these Western Han practitioners, the deceased would leave for another world that was similar to the living world in its bureaucratic structure. In accordance with the bureaucratic system of the living world, people imagined a similar underground administration for the deceased. In this system there were different ranks for officials, and usually a document written and sent by a living official could be accepted only by an underground official of the same rank, who then reported it to his or her superior.64 (5) Other characteristics. Besides these four common elements, there is another feature worth discussing. Among these eight texts, the three latest—Fenghuangshan Tombs 168 (167 B.C.E.) and 10 (153 B.C.E.) and Huchang Tomb 5 (71 B.C.E.)—all have similar endings that require the underground officials to deal with affairs according to statutes and decrees (lüling 律令).65 From these three examples, one might see that there was a trend to use legal formulae, “according to statutes and decrees” (ru lüling 如律令), to conclude the informing-the-underground texts. As Seidel points out, ru lüling is a stock phrase closing official documents in the Han.66 Since informing-the-underground texts sometimes used the same conventions as regular official documents, the usage of this standard ending was also adopted, as in many protective talismans and tomb-quelling texts from the Eastern Han on. The first tomb-quelling text available to us that ends with ru lüling was inscribed on a pottery jar dated to 92 C.E.67 If the earlier informingthe-underground texts were indeed an imitation of the official documents

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used in the living world, then the image of the Heavenly Emperor or other superior authority and the structure of authority based upon these clearly were not an innovation of the institutionalized Daoist traditions but were their inheritance or elaboration from an earlier time.68 The nature of the informing-the-underground texts is still being debated. Some scholars have seen in them an imperfect imitation or simplified version of official registry documents for the dead to register with the underground bureaucracy or a form of zhuan 傳, the passport-type document that was used for travel among different administrative areas including the underground administration.69 Putting aside speculations about specific functions of the informing-the-underground texts, it is generally agreed that these documents were a form of communication between the human realm—specifically the human bureaucracy—and its underground counterpart for the benefit of the dead. Based upon such communication, informing-the-underground texts actually illustrate a concept of the afterlife in the imaginations of people who put this type of document in the tomb. “Generally the country of the dead is represented more or less as a copy of the world of the living, and life there follows in the main the same lines as life on earth.”70 In the case of the informing-the-underground texts, the underground world mirrors the living one mainly in a bureaucratic sense, through its social structure and administrative system. In the underground world, officials were ranked in a hierarchy and assigned duties and authority in accordance with their rank. The administrative system was strictly regulated: the dead were required to have proper documents with them, including a paper listing their personal property and the attendants and servants accompanying them, to ensure their legal residency in the underground community. The eight informing-the-underground texts were all excavated in the former Chu area and might bear strong Chu characteristics. Based on the available materials, we may provisionally conclude that this genre was used mainly in the Western Han. The political and social landscape of the Western Han was a unified polity with a strong desire for order, political and cosmological. Arthur Wolf has argued in his study of contemporary popular religions in Taiwan that one characteristic of Chinese religion is that “it mirrors the social landscape of its adherents,” and their imagination of the supernatural world is largely determined by their concept of the social world in which they actually live.71 Though Wolf’s point derives from studies of modern Chinese religious practices, it might also be relevant to our discussion of their forerunner in the Han. The underground world and the religious beliefs concerning the afterlife certainly interacted with a larger sociopolitical search for order. As we can see in the informing-the-underground texts, on one hand, the same bureaucratic order was enforced in the afterlife world of the dead through ritual communication between the two realms, and on

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the other hand, the communication also reinforced the existing social order in the present world.72 The disappearance of informing-the-underground texts at the end of the Western Han and the appearance of tomb-quelling texts and protective talismans, different genres of tomb texts that were used beginning in the early Eastern Han, also indicate evolving attitudes toward death and the afterlife.73 In Western Han religious literature, the underground bureaucracy connected the underground world with the living human world, and bureaucratic ritual communication through texts such as informing-theunderground passed between them. In the Eastern Han, the newly emergent tomb-quelling texts worked in a slightly different way. At the time the tomb-quelling texts were being used, the bureaucratic system outside the human world had expanded to integrate the upper-heaven spirit world, and consequently the underground administration became its branch office. The communication then directly took place between the head office and the branch office, and the human world gradually faded from the stage. At the time of the informing-the-underground texts, the deceased were still treated as if they were alive but living in another world under the same bureaucratically administrated system and having the same requirements for necessities and security as living people. Therefore, their living relatives would prepare proper documents as well as necessary grave goods for them to live a good life in the underground world. However, in the Eastern Han, the growth of concepts that were later incorporated into institutionalized Daoist traditions, such as harmful ghosts and the Heavenly Emperor, dramatically changed popular conceptions of the underground world. The underground began to shift from a neutral place like the living world to a frightening place full of harmful beings. Therefore, the living family members of the deceased, on one hand, tried to bury the dead properly with abundant grave goods but, on the other hand, appealed to a higher authority, the heavenly bureaucracy, to warrant an official document to permanently separate the living and dead in different realms. They put such a document in the tomb to separate the dead from the living and—more importantly—to prevent the dead from coming back to trouble and harm the living. Daoist talismans functioned in the similar way.74 Nevertheless, changes in ideas about the afterlife, the underground world, and the emergence of the institutionalized Daoist concepts of ghosts and exorcism did not change the fundamental mechanism of bureaucratic communication. Communications were still executed within the bureaucratic system, and through bureaucratic means people appealed to the highest relevant spiritual authority. In this sense, the structure remained the same but expanded in scale. Informing-the-underground texts, tomb-quelling texts, and protective talismans share a significant social function, even though

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they work in different ways because they are based on different religious assumptions about death and the afterlife.

CONCLUSIONS In this chapter we have examined several kinds of tomb objects and tomb texts, including paintings with afterlife themes and texts intended for use by the dead in the afterlife. After surveying a number of burials and theories about the natures and functions of each type of tomb object and text, two points are clear. The first is that these Han tomb materials reflect a diverse range of concepts concerning death and the afterlife. Not only does one tomb differ from another in design, but even within the same tomb, elements of divergent concepts were put together without leaving signs of awkwardness or confusion on the part of specialists or practitioners. This leads to the second observation, which is that a single theory or model would be inadequate to explain all such phenomena and would only serve to distort the true nature of the complex state of display regarding views about death and the afterlife. To develop the second observation, once we reject a “standard” universal picture and accept the diversity, complexity, and seemingly inconsistency as a premise, we shift the focus of our inquiry away from strained interpretations and forced reconciliation of the conflicting ideas. In other words, Han people appear to have been at ease using a handful of ideas and concepts in combination to construct their perception of the cosmic order in a given place, time, or occasion. Keeping in mind the challenges proposed by scholars such as Gu, Hu, and Needham about the lack of afterlife connections in the Chinese preBuddhist traditions at the beginning of this chapter, the present study has attempted, through a focus on archaeological materials, to provide further understanding of the afterlife world. The excavated tomb objects and texts not only allow us to propose a possible reconstruction of the religious practices but also offer us an alternative account on a philosophical level for the more general question concerning death and the afterlife in the Han period and its relationship with the entry of Buddhism into China. In the Han, a tomb was a location without explicit ethical implications. The tomb does not give an account of its occupant’s conduct or force a moral judgment upon the deceased; instead, the tomb was foremost laid out as a supply center with necessities including documents and paperwork for the afterlife. To conclude, let us return to Mawangdui. This burial offers an excellent example to illustrate the unique characteristic of Han concepts of death and the afterlife. We do not only find paintings containing themes that can be explained in light of an afterlife journey, ritual ceremonies described in the transmitted literature, or a “happy underground home” that was constructed in

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a way that represented different cosmic realm; more importantly, the presence of an informing-the-underground text, implying that the deceased traveled to the underground world and communicated with an underground bureaucracy, clearly shows the composite nature of the belief system underlying these burial practices. In other words, the Mawangdui tomb embodies the plural forms of death and the afterlife in the Han, just as other tomb objects and texts excavated in recent years have furnished excellent evidence to argue against a single theory of the Han concept of death and the afterlife.

NOTES I would like to thank the editors for their careful reading and comments on the first draft of this essay, and I am also grateful to Mark Csikszentmihalyi, William H. Nienhauser, and Enno Giele for their criticism and comments. All their endeavors have greatly helped to improve this work. 1. Gu Yanwu 顧炎武, Rizhilu jishi 日知錄集釋 (Changsha: Yuelu shushe, 1994), 1079. 2. For Hu Shi’s radical view, see “The Indianization of China: A Case Study in Cultural Borrowing,” in Independence, Convergence, and Borrowing in Institutions, Thought, and Art, Harvard Tercentenary Conference of Arts and Sciences (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1937), 224–225. In his later unpublished manuscripts and essays on the topic of the Ten Yamas (Shidian Yanluo 十殿閻羅), he modified his early point of view and recognized that some of the Buddhist Yamas had a Chinese indigenous origin, such as Dashan fujun 大山府君 (i.e., Taishan fujun 泰山府君), Siming 司命 and Silu 司祿. See Hu Shi jinanguan 胡適紀念館, Hu Shi shougao 胡適手稿 (Taipei: Hu Shi jinianguan, 1970), vol. 8, section 1, 23. 3. Joseph Needham, Science and Civilization in China, vol. 5: Chemistry and Chemical Technology, part 2: Spagyrical Discovery and Invention: Magisteris of Gold and Immortality (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1974), 98, n. c. 4. Needham, Spagyrical Discovery and Invention, 80. 5. Needham, Spagyrical Discovery and Invention, 81. 6. Yu Ying-shih, “ ‘O Soul, Come Back!’ A Study in the Changing Conceptions of the Soul and Afterlife in Pre-Buddhist China,” Harvard Journal of Asiatic Studies 47.2 (1987): 381–382. 7. Stephen R. Bokenkamp, Ancestors and Anxiety: Daoism and the Birth of Rebirth in China (Berkeley, Los Angeles, and London: University of California Press, 2007), 7. 8. Bokenkamp, Ancestors and Anxiety, 8. 9. Bokenkamp, Ancestors and Anxiety, 382. 10. A good example is a text written on bamboo slips excavated from a tomb at Jiudian 九店 in Jiangling 江陵, Hubei 湖北 Province, which dates to 316 B.C.E. It is an incantation prayer for those who died in battle (bingsizhe 兵死者) and it tells us that the place that the dead are supposed to go is “at the edge of Mount Fu and in the wilds of Buzhou 不周.” For the text, see Hubeisheng wenwu kaogu yanjiusuo 湖 北省文物考古研究所 and Beijing daxue zhongwenxi 北京大學中文系, eds., Jiudian

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Chujian 九店楚簡 (Beijing: Zhonghua shuju, 2000). For a study of it, see Lai Guo-long 來國龍, “Death and the Otherworldly Journey in Early China as Seen through Tomb Texts, Travel Paraphernalia, and Road Rituals,” Asia Major 18.1 (2005): 5–13. 11. Poo Mu-chou, “Ideas concerning Death and Burial in Pre-Han and Han China,” Asia Major 3.2 (1990): 38. 12. In the seventh year of Duke Zhao 昭, the Zuozhuan 左傳 records the famous story that Boyou 伯有, a noble of Zheng 鄭 who died unnaturally, came back as a harmful ghost. This event invoked Zichan 子產, a statesman of Zheng, to remark on Boyou’s return based on a dualistic existence of hun and po. See Yang Bojun 楊伯峻, Chunqiu zuozhuan zhu 春秋左傳注 (Beijing: Zhonghua shuju, 1981; reprint, 1990), 1292–1293. 13. For a detailed account of the historical development of the concepts of hun and po, see Yu, “ ‘O Soul, Come Back!,’ ” 369–378. Yu has painted a traditional, standard picture of the dualism of hun and po recorded in the Zhouli 周禮 that was circulated in the Han. However, as Kenneth Brashier has pointed out, many transmitted sources from the Qin and Han have shown that this dualism probably was not as dominant as is usually assumed. Mircea Eliade also noticed this seemingly “paradoxical multilocation of the soul” cross-culturally. See Kenneth E. Brashier, “Han Thanatology and the Division of ‘Souls,’ ” Early China 21 (1996): 125–158; Mircea Eliade, “Mythologies of Death: An Introduction,” in Occultism, Witchcraft, and Cultural Fashions: Essays in Comparative Religions (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1976), 32–46. For a brief discussion of this topic, see Mark Csikszentmihalyi, Readings in Han Chinese Thought (Indianapolis and Cambridge: Hackett, 2006), 140–141. 14. For additional discussion of this painting, see chapter 2 in this volume. 15. For a complete site report, see Hunansheng bowuguan 湖南省博物 館, Changsha Mawangdui yihao Hanmu 長沙馬王堆一號漢墓 (Beijing: Wenwu chubanshe, 1973). Another T-shaped painting with similar afterlife motif was found in Tomb 3. In this study, I will use the one from Tomb 1 as the example to illustrate and examine the related issues. 16. Whereas scholars have generally agreed that the vertical portion depicts the procession of the deceased countess as she ascends to paradise, they have different interpretations of the scene presented in the vertical part, specifically, where her destination lies. Hou Ching-lang 侯錦郎 suggests that the countess was in an intermediate state between heaven and earth (with a banquet held below on the lower earth, and the celestial realm above) and was moving toward the upper heaven. Sufukawa Hiroshi and Michael Loewe agree that the deceased is going to paradise, but they disagree on where that paradise is. Sufukawa sees the countess as riding a dragon chariot or boat toward the immortal Western realm of Kunlun Mountain. Loewe, on the contrary, identifies the direction as eastward to Penglai Island. Their opposite interpretations are built on different identifications of particular images presented in the painting. For details, see Anna Seidel, “Tokens of Immortality in Han Graves: A Review of Ways to Paradise,” Numen 29 (1982): 84–85. 17. Michael Loewe, Ways to Paradise: The Chinese Quest for Immortality (London: George Allen and Unwin, 1979), 34. 18. Loewe, Ways to Paradise, 33.

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19. The fu ritual is recorded in both the “Shisangli 士喪禮” chapter of the Yili 儀禮 and the “Sangdaji 喪大記” chapter in the Liji 禮記. Yu Ying-shih briefly summarizes this complex ritual as follows: As soon as a person dies, a “summoner” (fu-che 復者), normally a member of the family climbs from the east eaves to the top of the roof with a set of clothes belonging to the deceased. The summoner faces the north, waves the clothes of the deceased, and calls him by name aloud—“O! Thou so-and-so, come back!” After the call has been repeated three times, the summoner throws down the clothes, which are received by another person on the ground. The receiver then spreads the clothes over the body of the dead. Afterwards, the summoner descends from the west eaves. Thus the ritual of Fu is completed. Yu, “ ‘O Soul, Come Back!’ ” 365. 20. See Yu Weichao’s 俞偉超 discussion of the Mawangdui painting in “Zuotan Changsha Mawangdui yihao Hanmu 座談長沙馬王堆一號漢墓,” Wenwu 文物 9 (1972): 60–61. 21. Yu, “ ‘O Soul, Come Back!’ ” 366–367. 22. Yu, “ ‘O Soul, Come Back!’ ” 365. 23. Yu points out that feiyi means “mantle,” “shroud,” or “cover,” and, in terms of meaning, fei and hu are interchangeable. According to Han commentaries, a hu is a red cloth used to cover the corpse of the newly dead and then later the coffin. The location of the Mawangdui painting—covering the body in the innermost coffin—supports Yu’s identification. See Yu, “ ‘O Soul, Come Back!’ ” 368–369. 24. Yu, “ ‘O Soul, Come Back!’ ” 369. 25. Yu, “ ‘O Soul, Come Back!’ ” 385–386. 26. For a detailed account of the history and changes of the concept of immortality before the Han, see Yu, “ ‘O Soul, Come Back!’ ” 386–388. 27. Gu Yanwu cited the Bowuzhi 博物志 in his “Taishan zhigui” chapter as follows: “Mount Tai is also called the Grandson of Heaven. That is to say [that he] is the Grandson of the Heavenly God, in charge of summoning man’s hun and po souls, and knows the length of the life span 泰山一曰天孫.言為天帝之孫, 主召人魂魄, 知生命之長短者.” See Gu, Rizhilu jishi, 1079. Also see Yu, “ ‘O Soul, Come Back!’ ” 388–393. 28. Theories identifying the theme of the Mawangdui painting as an afterlife journey, including Loewe’s explicit paradise model and Yu’s implicit dualistic abodes of hun and po theory, are dominant, but there are other ways to identify the theme as well. Wu Hung’s “happy home” tomb model provides a serious challenge to Loewe and Yu. I will introduce his study in the next section. 29. For the site report, see Luoyang bowuguan 洛陽博物館, “Luoyang Xihan Bu Qianqiu mu bihuamu fajue jianbao 洛陽西漢卜千秋墓壁畫墓發掘簡報,” Wenwu 6 (1977): 1–12. 30. There are different readings of specific images of the Bu Qianqiu tomb fresco; for the one presented here, see Sun Zuoyun 孫作雲, “Luoyang Xihan Bu Qianqiu mu bihua kaoshi 洛陽西漢卜千秋墓壁畫考釋,” Wenwu 6 (1977): 17–22.

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31. Wu Hung, “Where Are They Going? Where Did They Come From? Hearse and ‘Soul Carriage’ in Han Dynasty Tomb Art,” Orientations 29.6 (1998): 22. 32. For the site report, see Shandongsheng bowuguan 山東省博物館 and Cangshanxian wenhuaguan 蒼山縣文化館, “Shandong Cangshan Yuanjia yuannian huaxiang shimu 山東蒼山元嘉元年畫像石墓,” Kaogu 考古 2 (1975): 124–134. For studies on this tomb, see Wu Hung, “Han Dynasty Tomb Art,” 22–31. 33. See Wu, “Han Dynasty Tomb Art,” 22–24. 34. Based on the structural features, Lai argues against the view that this incantation was an actual record of prayer offered in a real situation. See Lai, “Death and the Otherworldly Journey in Early China,” 5–8. 35. For studies on the “Pace of Yu” (“Yu bu 禹步”), particularly its earliest appearance in excavated texts from Shuihudi 睡虎地 and Mawangdui, see Donald Harper, “Warring States, Qin, and Han Manuscripts Related to Natural Philosophy and the Occult,” in New Sources of Early Chinese History: An Introduction to the Reading of Inscriptions and Manuscripts, ed. Edward Shaughnessey (Berkeley, Calif.: Society for the Study of Early China and Institute of East Asian Studies, 1997), 223–253, particularly 240–243. Edward Schafer also has a section devoted to this technique in relation to stars in the Tang; see his Pacing the Void: T’ang Approaches to the Stars (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1977), 238–241. 36. Lai, “Death and the Otherworldly Journey in Early China,” 2, 42–43. 37. Poo Mu-chou, Muzang yu shengsi: Zhongguo gudai zongjiao zhi xingsi 墓葬與生死:中國古代宗教之省思 (Taipei: Lianjing chuban shiye gongsi, 1993), 195–198. Wu Hung also published a series of studies in which he discusses the transition from pit tombs to chamber tombs. See “From Temple to Tomb: Ancient Chinese Art and Religion in Transition,” Early China 13 (1988), 78–115; “Temple, Palace, and Tomb” in Monumentality in Early Chinese Art and Architecture (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1995), particularly 77–142; and The Art of the Yellow Springs: Understanding Chinese Tombs (Honolulu: University of Hawai’i Press, 2010), 17–33. 38. Poo, Muzhang yu shengsi, 201. 39. Wu Hung, “Art in Its Ritual Context: Rethinking Mawangdui,” Early China 17 (1992): 112. 40. Wu, “Art in Its Ritual Context,” 122–125. 41. Wu, “Art in Its Ritual Context,” 131. 42. Wu Hung rejects Loewe’s journey reading and Yu’s fu ritual reading of the theme of the painting and instead offers a hypothesis based on a reading of the painting as a “name banner” (mingjing 銘/名旌). Mingjing were banners used to identify the dead in the afterlife when the identity of the dead was lost; according to Zheng Xuan’s 鄭玄 (127–200) commentary to the Yili, mingjing were only used to cover the jiu corpse, not the shi corpse (i.e., the laid-out corpse on the couch before it was put into the coffin) and therefore was considered to be a substitute for the physical jiu corpse. See Wu, “Art in Its Ritual Context,” 121. 43. Wu, “Art in Its Ritual Context,” 134. 44. Wu, “Art in Its Ritual Context,” 127. 45. Lai Guo-long indirectly answers this question in his study “Death and the Otherworldly Journey in Early China.” In a way, assigning a specific function to each kind of tomb object (i.e., as “travel paraphernalia”) in the course of a

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dangerous afterlife journey also provides a possible interpretation to the presence of tomb goods. 46. However, Seidel goes further to challenge the idea about the separation of the hun and po and asks why, if the intelligent hun has departed to an external paradise after the ritual of “summoning the soul” failed, mirrors with immortals and pictures of the Queen Mother of the West were still put into the tomb when the hun soul has already gone. She therefore argues that such a separation between the hun and po is not possible because it contradicts recorded funerary customs of the Han; most of the periodic sacrifices made to the dead were actually dedicated only to the “pure spirits” (i.e., the hun). She concludes that both hun and po reside in the tomb, the final permanent home for the dead. See Seidel, “Tokens of Immortality in Han Graves,” 106. 47. Seidel, “Tokens of Immortality in Han Graves,” 107. 48. Wu, “Art in Its Ritual Context,” 141–142. 49. The earliest occurrence of huangquan as a place related to death is in the first year of Duke Yin 隱 (ca. 721 B.C.E.) in the Zuozhuan. Duke Zhuang of Zheng 鄭莊公 vowed not to see his mother, Wujiang 武姜, who had been unfair to him, until they reached the “Yellow Springs” (不及黃泉無相見也). See Yang Bojun, Chunqiu zuozhuan zhu, 14. Another repeated theme about huangquan appeared in the Mengzi 孟子. Passage 3A.10 reads “that the earthworm above eats the dry soil and below drinks from the Yellow Springs 夫蚓, 上食槁壤, 下飲黄泉.” See Sishu zhangju jizhu 四書章句集注 (Beijing: Zhonghua shuju, 1983), 274. Variants of this quotation can also be seen in late Warring States texts such as the Xunzi 荀子 and Han texts such as the Da Dai liji 大戴禮記, Shuoyuan 說苑, Qianfu lun 潛夫論, and Huainanzi 淮南子. In the Zhuangzi 莊子, we see another reference to huangquan as the opposite of the upper limit in the sky. In the “Qiushui 秋水” chapter, there is “stamping on the Yellow Springs to climb the Grand Majesty 跐黄泉而登大皇.” See Guo Qingfan 郭慶藩, Zhuangzi jishi 莊子集釋 (Beijing: Zhonghua shuju, 1961), 601. In the Liezi 列子, a controversially dated text, there is the following: “the ultimate man above sees the blue sky, below diving into the Yellow Springs 夫至人者, 上闚青天, 下潜黄泉.” See Yang Bojun, Liezi jishi 列子集釋 (Beijing: Zhonghua shuju, 1979), 52. In these cases, huangquan clearly refers to physically existing springwater deep underground. However, in the Han, another usage of huangquan appeared and gradually took the dominant position through the coming of Buddhism. According to the biography of the prince of Guangling 廣陵, Xu 胥, the son of Emperor Wu 武, lamented his death before committing suicide (because of the exposure of his crime) in a song, as follows: “Below, the Yellow Springs are dark and deep. Man is born to reach death, for what reason should [man] strive to labor the heart? 黄泉下 兮幽深, 人生要死, 何為苦心?” Here the Yellow Springs were explicitly connected to death. See Hanshu 漢書 (Beijng: Zhonghua shuju, 1962), 2762. In the following Hou Hanshu 後漢書 quotation, this aspect is even more apparent. In a memorial to Emperor Xiaoming 孝明 of the Eastern Han, the prince of Runan 汝南, Chang 暢, wrote that “hun and po leave the body [and] separately return to the Yellow Springs 魂魄去身, 分归黄泉.” See Houhanshu 後漢書 (Beijing: Zhonghua shuju, 1965), 1676. In Wang Chong’s 王充 critique of the lavish burials in the Eastern Han, he clearly promoted the proposal that when people died, they should just be buried “under the Yellow Springs 葬之黃泉之下.” Even though he went on to argue that

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the Yellow Springs were not the place for man to live, he wrote that there should be some difference between the dead and the living, and people should not have doubt about burying the dead there (黄泉之下, 非人所居, 然而葬之不疑者, 以死 绝異處, 不可同也). See Liu Pansui 劉盼遂, Lunheng jijie 論衡集解 (Beijing: Zhonghua shuju, 1957), 463. Another reference to huangquan comes from the Taipingjing 太平經: “therefore those who are good go up, and their fate belongs to heaven, as the living belong to heaven; those who are bad go downward, and their fate belongs to the earth, as the dead belong to the earth, for this reason, they go down and return to the Yellow Springs 故善者上行, 命屬天, 猶生人屬天也; 惡者下行, 命屬地, 猶死者惡, 故下歸黃泉.” Though the contrast between the good and the bad may indicate Buddhist influence, the other two parallelisms between heaven and earth, and the living and the dead, possibly indicate a pre-Buddhist idea about the separation between the living and the dead. Thus, the Yellow Springs were clearly an abode for the dead. See Wang Ming 王明, Taipingjing hejiao 太平經合校 (Beijing: Zhonghua shuju, 1960), 279. By comparison, the term youdu has a shorter and simpler textual history. Except for its use in “Zhaohun” in the Chuci, almost all other occurrences of this term refer to a geographically remote place in the north of China. Examples can be found in Warring States texts, such as the Zhuangzi, Hanfeizi 韓非子, and Mozi 墨子, and Han texts such as the Da Dai liji and Huainanzi. In “Zhaohun,” a poem likely composed in Han times, the “Dark City” was presented as an unpleasant and undesirable place ruled by a monsterlike Earth God (Tubo 土伯): O soul, come back! Go not down to the Land of Darkness, Where the Earth God lies, nine-coiled, with dreadful horns on his forehead, And a great humped back and bloody thumbs, pursuing man, swiftfooted: Three eyes he has in his tiger’s head, and his body is alike a bull’s. 魂兮歸來 君無下此幽都些 土伯九約 其角觺觺些 敦脄血拇 逐人駓駓些 参目虎首 其身若牛些 See David Hawkes, Ch’u Tz’u: The Songs of the South (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1959), 105. 50. Siming, as a deity in charge of fate and life span, also appears in transmitted literature, as “Da Siming 大司命” and “Shao Siming 少司命” in the “Jiuge 九歌” chapter of the Chuci and other archaeologically discovered divinatory texts, including those found at Tianxingguan 天星觀 Tomb 1, also dated to around the fourth century B.C.E. See Hubei Jingzhou diqu bowuguan 湖北荊州地區博物館, “Jiangling Tianxingguan yihao Chumu 江陵天星觀一號楚墓,” Kaogu xuebao 考古學報 1 (1982): 110. 51. Terms similar to dizhu appear elsewhere in the divinatory records and were modified by either gong 宮 (palace) or ye 野 (wilderness). Liu Xinfang 劉信芳 notes that “Yueyu, xia 越語下,” in the Guoyu 國語, reads, “Imperial heaven and earth,

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Four Village Lord of Earth, correct them 皇天后土, 四鄉地主正之” and says that yedizhu is similar to sixiangdizhu. See Liu Xinfang, Baoshan Chujian jiegu 包山楚簡 解詁 (Taipei: Yiwen yinshuguan, 2003), 223. This suggests an awareness of different functions of related deities in various locations. 52. For monographic studies of the Baoshan tomb, see Chen Wei 陳偉, Baoshan chujian chutan 包山楚簡初探 (Wuhan: Wuhan daxue chubanshe, 1996); Constance A. Cook, Death in Ancient China: The Tale of One Man’s Journey (Leiden: Brill, 2006). For the Baoshan divinatory and sacrificial slips, see Guo Jue, “Reconstructing Fourth Century B.C.E. Chu Religious Practices: Divination, Sacrifice, and Healing in the Newly Excavated Baoshan Manuscripts” (Ph.D. diss., University of Wisconsin– Madison, 2008). 53. For earlier introduction to and studies of the Fangmatan account, see He Shuangquan 何 雙全, “Tianshui Fangmatan Qinjian zongshu” 天水放馬灘秦簡綜述, Wenwu 2 (1989): 23–31; Li Xueqin 李學勤, “Fangmatan jian zhong de zhiguai gushi” 放馬灘簡中的志怪 故事, Wenwu 4 (1990): 43–47; For the latest publication of the site and the excavated texts, see Gansu sheng wenwu kaogu yanjiusuo 甘肅省文物 考古研究所, Tianshui Fangmatan Qinjian 天水放馬灘秦簡 (Beijing: Zhonghua shuju, 2009). See also Donald Harper, “Resurrection in Warring States Popular Religion,” Taoist Resources 5 (1994): 13–28. 54. Harper, “Resurrection in Warring States Popular Religion,” 18–19. 55. See Anna Seidel, “Traces of Han Religion in Funeral Texts in Tombs,” in Do¯ kyo¯ to Shu¯kyo¯ 道教と宗教文化, ed. Akitsuki Kan’ei 秋月觀暎 (Tokyo: Hirakawa shuppansha, 1987), 25. 56. Terry F. Kleeman, “Land Contracts and Related Documents,” in Religion, Thought, and Science in China: A Festschrift in Honor of Professor Ryo¯ kai Makio on His Seventieth Birthday, ed. Editorial Committee for the Commemoration of Professor Ryo¯kai Makio’s Seventieth Birthday (Tokyo: Kokusho kankonkai, 1984), 7–8. 57. Harper, “Resurrection in Warring States Popular Religion,” 17–18. Some aspects of these texts remain controversial. Arguments are focused on two closely related aspects, appellation and nature. Western scholars, as mentioned previously, generally agree that these texts functioned as a means of communication between human and underground bureaucracies and call such texts “proclamations” or “memoranda.” Chinese scholars have more disagreement on particular texts. Huang Shengzhang 黃盛璋 has published a series of articles on these texts and first argued that they should be called gaodice 告地策 and that they functioned as census registers for the deceased in the underground world. See Huang Shengzhang, “Jiangling Fenghuangshan Hanmu jiandu jiqi zai lishi dili yanjiu shang de jiazhi 江陵鳳凰山 漢墓簡牘及其在歷史地理研究上的價值,” Wenwu 6 (1974): 66–77; “Fawang dixia de wenshu: Gaodice 發往地下的文書—告地策,” Wenwu tiandi 文物天地 6 (1993): 19–21; “Jiangling Gaotai Hanmu xinchu ‘gaodice,’ qiance yu xiangguan zhidu fafu 江陵高臺漢墓新出“告地策”、遣策與相關製度發復,” Jianghan kaogu 江漢考古 2 (1994): 41–44, 26; “Hanjiang Huchang Hanmu suowei ‘wenzidu’ yu gaodice mi zaijie 邗江胡場漢墓所謂“文字牘”輿告地策謎再揭,” Wenbo 文博 5 (1996): 54–59; “Jiekai gaodice zhumi: Cong Yunmeng Longgang Qinmu, Hanjiang Huchang Hanmu mudu shuoqi 揭開告地策諸謎: 從雲夢龍崗秦墓、邗江胡場漢墓木牘說起,” Gugong wenwu yuekan 故宮文物月刊 8 (1996): 124–134. Yu Weichao once called the text

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found in Fenghuangshan Tomb 168 “gao dixia guanli wen” 告地下官吏文 (“Guanyu Fenghuangshan 168 hao Hanmu zuotan jiyao 關於鳳凰山一六八號漢墓座談紀要,” Wenwu 9 [1975]: 13). These two appellations, especially gaodice, are widely accepted within Chinese scholarship. Scholars such as Chen Zhi 陳直, Hu Pingsheng 胡平 生, Li Jiahao 李家浩, Liu Guosheng 劉國勝, and Liu Zhaorui 劉昭瑞 accept these two ways to name these texts in their own articles. See Chen Zhi 陳直, “Guanyu ‘Jiangling cheng’ gao ‘Dixia cheng’ 關於江陵丞告地下丞,” Wenwu 12 (1977): 76; Hu Pingsheng 胡平生, “Yunmeng Longgang liuhaomu muzhukao 雲夢龍崗六號墓 墓主考,” in Yunmeng Longgang Qinjian 雲夢龍崗秦簡, ed. Liu Xinfang 劉信芳 and Liang Zhu 梁柱 (Beijing: Kexue chubanshe, 1997), 156–160; Li Jiahao 李家浩, “Wuzun, zong ji qita 毋尊縱及其他,” Wenwu 7 (1996): 89–90; Liu Guosheng 劉國 勝, “Gaotai Handu ‘Andu’ biejie 高臺漢牘‘安都’別解,” Guwenzi yanjiu 古文字研 究 24 (2002): 444–448; Liu Zhaorui 劉昭瑞, “Anducheng yu Wuyijun 安都丞輿 武夷君,” Wenshi 文史 2 (2002): 51–59. Although they accept this appellation in general, other scholars such as Chen Songchang 陳松長 and Liu Xinfang disagree on particular texts, including the one from Mawangdui Tomb 3. Chen Songchang argues that this text is part of the tomb inventory and functions as the checklist that was read publicly in the ritual called “reading the gifts and holding the counter” (dufengzhisuan 讀賵執筭) in the funeral ceremony as mentioned in the Yili. See Chen Songchang, “Mawangdui sanhao Hanmu mudu sanlun 馬王堆三號漢墓木牘 散論,” Wenwu 6 (1994): 64–70; “Mawangdui sanhao Hanmu jinian mudu xingzhi de zai renshi 馬王堆三號漢墓幾年木牘性質的再認識,” Wenwu 1 (1997): 62–64. Another controversial text is recorded on a wooden tablet discovered at Yunmeng Longgang 雲夢龍崗 Tomb 6, an early Qin tomb excavated in Hubei Province in 1989. Huang Shengzhang and Hu Pingsheng regard this text as a gaodice, but Liu Xinfang disagrees with them and argues that the nature of this text is mingpan 冥 判 (underworld adjudication). See Liu Xinfang and Liang Zhu, eds., Yunmeng Longgang Qinjian (Beijing: Kexue chubanshe, 1997). Liu Guosheng also disagrees with Huang Shengzhang and Hu Pingsheng in the Longgang case and argues that this text might be closer to those records of legal cases in the “Zouyanshu 奏讞書” found in Zhangjiashan 張家山 Tomb 247 (ca. 186 B.C.E.). See Liu Guosheng, “Yunmeng Longgang jiandu kaoshi buzheng jiqi xiangguang wenti de tantao (zhaiyao) 雲夢 龍崗簡牘考釋補正及其相關問題的探討 (摘要),” in Yunmeng Longgang Qinjian 雲 夢龍崗秦簡, ed. Liu Xinfang and Liang Zhu (Beijing: Kexue chubanshe, 1997), 161–169, particularly 165–69. I adopt the readings of Liu Xinfang and Liu Guosheng regarding the nature of the text found in Longgang Tomb 6 and will not include the Longgang text in the present discussion of the gaodi texts. In this study, gaodi (“informing-the-underground”) texts will be used. 58. For Xiejiaqiao Tomb 1, see an introductory report with color photographs of the tomb and the wooden tablets on which the gaodi text was written by Yang Kaiyong 楊開勇 “Xiejiaoqiao yihao Hanmu” 謝家橋一號漢墓 in Jingzhou zhongyao kaogu faxian 荊州 重要考古發現, edited by Jingzhou Museum (Beijing: Wenwu chubanshe, 2009), 188–197; for the site report, see Jingzhou bowuguan 荊州博物 館, “Hubei Jingzhou Xiejiaqiao yihao Hanmu fajue jianbo” 湖北荊州謝家橋一號 漢墓發掘簡報, Wenwu 4 (2009): 26–42. For a preliminary study of the gaodi text from Xiejiaqiao Tomb 1, see Liu Guosheng, “Xiejiaqiao yihao Hanmu ‘gaodishu’ du de chubu kaocha” 謝家橋一號漢墓《告地書》 牘的初步考察, Jianghan kaogu

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江漢考古 3 (2009): 120–122. For the Gaotai site report, see Hubeisheng Jingzhou diqu bowuguan 湖北省荊州地區博物館, “Jiangling Gaotai 18 hao Hanmu wajue jianbao 江陵高台18号汉墓挖掘简报,” Wenwu 8 (1993): 12–21; Hubeisheng Jingzhou bowuguan 湖北省荊州博物館, Jingzhou Gaotai Qin Han mu 荊州高台秦漢 墓 (Beijing: Kexue chubanshe, 2000). For the Huchang site report, see Yangzhou bowuguan 揚州博物館 and Hanjiang tushuguan 邗江圖書館, “Jiangsu Hanjiang Huchang wuhao mu 江蘇邗江胡場5號墓,” Wenwu 11 (1981): 12–21. For a brief introduction to the Maojiayuan tomb, see Zhongguo kaogu xuehui 中國考古學會, ed., Zhongguo kaokuxue nianjian 中國考古學年鑒 (Beijing: Wenwu chubanshe, 1988), 204. For Fenghuangshan tombs, see Changjiang liuyu dierqi wenwu kaogu gongzuo renyuan xunlianban 長江流域第二期文物考古工作人員訓練班, “Hubei Jiangling Fenghuangshan Xihanmu fajue jianbao 湖北江陵鳳凰山西漢墓發掘簡報,” Wenwu 6 (1974): 41–61; Jinancheng Fenghuangshan yiliubahao Hanmu fajue zhengli zu 紀南城鳳凰山一六八號漢墓發掘整理組, “Hubei Jiangling Fenghuangshan yiliubahao Hanmu fajue jianbao 湖北江陵鳳凰山一六八號漢墓發掘簡報,” Wenwu 9 (1975): 1–8. For Kongjiapo, see Hubeisheng wenwu kaogu yanjiusuo and Suizhoushi kaogudui 隨州市考古隊, Suizhou Kongjiapo Hanmu jiandu 隨州孔家坡漢墓簡牘 (Beijing: Wenwu chubanshe, 2006). 59. Unless noted, all translations are mine. In the interest of length, translation notes are not included. I am in the process of producing a study as well as annotated translations for all eight gaodi texts for future publication. 60. In most cases, the voice of gaodi texts was not that of the deceased; however, the text from Fenghuangshan Tomb 10 is an exception. The writer of this gaodi text was the deceased himself, Zhang Yan 张偃, an official in a township (xiangguan 鄉官). However, from his clothing, his personal adornment, the inventory of his grave goods, and the actual unearthed burial materials from his tomb, some scholars argue that his official title was not granted by the government but rather was purchased. Therefore, though his noble rank is Grandee of the Fifth Order (wudafu 五大夫), his real social status was not as high as the rank identified. That is probably the reason why he wrote the letter in his own voice, rather than having other officials do so for him. See Yu Weichao, “Guanyu Fenghuangshan 168 hao mu zuotan jiyao,” in Wenwu 9 (1975): 9–20; Huang, “Jiangling Fenghuangshan Hanmu jiandu jiqi zai lishi dili yanjiu shang de jiazhi,” 74. 61. In parts the Zhang Shujing tomb-quelling pot reads: “In the second year of the reign of Jiaping, in the twelfth month, in which the first day was yisi, on the sixteenth day, which was a gengshen day, the envoy of Heavenly Emperor informed the household of the Zhang family. . . . When the letter arrives, restrain and admonish the underground functionaries and [ask them] not to bother and harass the household of the Zhang family again 嘉平二年十二月乙巳朔十六日庚申, 天帝使者, 告張氏之家 . . . 傳到, 約敕地吏, 勿複煩擾張氏之家. See Ikeda On 池田温, “Chu¯goku rekidai boken ryakuko¯ 中国歴代墓券略考,” To¯ yo¯ -bunkakenkyu¯jo kiyo¯ 東洋文化研究所紀要 86 (1981): 273. 62. See Huang Shengzhang, “Jiangling Gaotai Hanmu xinchu ‘gaodice’ qiance yu xiangguan zhidu fafu,” 43; Hubeisheng Jingzhou bowuguan, Jingzhou Gaotai Qin Han mu, 227. 63. One exception is Wang Fengshi 王奉世 in Huchang Tomb 5, who appeared not to have had a noble or official title. Instead, at the time of his death, he was

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probably a prisoner; the other tomb occupants include reverent mother of a Courtierin-Waiting and Grand Master in Xiejiaqiao Tomb 1, the son of the Marquis of Dai in Mawangdui Tomb 3, the bereaved wife of the Marquis within the Pass in Gaotai Tomb 18, Commandant Grandee within the Pass in Maojiayuan Tomb 1, Grandee of the Fifth Order in Fenghuangshan Tombs 10 and 168, and Husbander of the Warehouse (i.e., a county-level official in charge of management of the Warehouse and construction) in Kongjiapo Tomb 8. 64. However, there were exceptions as well. In some cases, the deceased himself or the writer could directly address and report to the highest-ranking officials, such as the Underground Lord. This exception supports the view that the informingthe-underground texts only imperfectly imitate carefully prepared regular official documents in the world of the living. 65. Fenghuangshan Tomb 168: “command the subordinate functionaries to work [according to laws and decrees] 可令吏以從事”; Fenghuangshan Tomb 10: “each [official should] command [his subordinates] to meet and work according to the laws and decrees 各令會以律令從事”; Huchang Tomb 5: “[deal with this matter] according to laws and decrees 如律令.” 66. Seidel, “Traces of Han Religion in Funeral Texts in Tombs,” 39. 67. See Wang Guangyong 王光永, “Baojishi Hanmu faxian Guanghe yu Yongyuan nianjian zhushu taoqi 寶雞市漢墓發現光和與永元年間朱書陶器,” Wenwu 3 (1981): 55. 68. For some examples of the relationship between early mantic practices and later Daoist adaptations of these practices, see Mark Csikszentmihalyi, “Han Cosmology and Mantic Practices,” in Handbook of Daoism, ed. Livia Kohn (Leiden: Brill, 2000), 53–73. 69. The “Siguan 司官” section of the “Diguan 地官” chapter in the Zhouli 周禮 reads: “All those delivered money and goods should be sent off with a staff sign and a zhuan document 凡所達貨賄者, 則以節傳出之.” Zheng Xuan comments on the zhuan as a document similar to the guosuo permit (i.e., a permit for passing through places) (傳如移過所文書). See Li Xueqin 李學勤, ed., Zhouli zhushu 周 禮注疏, Shisanjing zhushu (Beijing: Beijing daxue chubanshe, 1999), 384–385. The “Annals of Xiaojing 孝景本紀” in the Shiji 史記 reads, “re-establishing the fords and passes, [people] use passport documents to exit or enter 復置津關, 用傳出入.” See Shiji (Beijing: Zhonghua shuju, 1959; reprint, 1982), 442. In a Jin 晉 text called Gujin zhu 古今注, there is a detailed account of this type of document: “All zhuan are made of wood, one chi and five cun in length. Write signs and letter on it and again seal it with another tablet. Both are sealed with the stamp of the censor scribe, and that is what is taken as trustworthy. It is like the present passing-through document 凡傳皆以木為之, 長尺五寸, 書符信於上, 又以一板封之, 皆封以御史印 章, 所以為信也, 如今之過所也.” See Cui Bao 崔豹, Gujin zhu, Sibu beiyao 四部備 要 ed. (Taipei: Taiwan zhonghua shuju, 1965), 354: 6a. 70. Theo P. Van Baaren, “Afterlife: Geographies of Death,” in Encyclopedia of Religion, ed. Lindsay Jones (New York: MacMillan, 2005), 136–137. 71. Arthur P. Wolf, “Gods, Ghosts, and Ancestors,” in Religion and Ritual in Chinese Societies, ed. Arthur P. Wolf (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1974), 131. 72. For an apt study of the dynamic relationship between cosmology and power in early China, see Wang Aihe, Cosmology and Political Culture in Early China (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000).

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73. Lu Xiqi 魯西奇 has recently published a study on the land contracts in the Han in which he proposes that the gaodi texts used in the Western Han were the original source for the Eastern Han tomb-quelling texts and land contracts because of their similar nature and functions of appealing for protection from the supernatural world. See Lu Xiqi, “Handai maidiquan de shizhi, yuanyuan yu yiyi 漢代買地券的 實質, 淵源與意義,” Zhongguo shi yanjiu 1 (2006): 61–67. 74. For studies on Eastern Han talismans, see Wang Yucheng 王育成, “Donghan daofu shili 東漢道符釋例,” Kaogu xuebao 1 (1991): 45–56; Csikszentmihalyi, Readings in Han Chinese Thought, 156–66.

FOUR

WAR, DEATH, AND ANCIENT CHINESE COSMOLOGY Thinking through the Thickness of Culture Roger T. Ames

During the several centuries leading up to the state of Qin’s consolidation of power on the central plains of present-day China, the ferocity and horror of internecine warfare rose exponentially. Indeed, death itself had become a way of life. What, then, did the infantryman on the killing field and his mother think about and feel when they reflected on the former’s mortality, that is, on the very real possibility that the day may be his last? How were these people of ancient China culturally disposed to think about dying—their own death and, perhaps even more heartrending, the loss of someone they loved? In this chapter, I will argue that the intensity of warfare has been a defining human activity in the articulation of the distinctive correlative worldview of ancient China. We must not undervalue the impact that the trauma of perennial war has had on shaping Chinese culture in its formative period. Further, I will contest a resistance among contemporary scholars to thick cultural generalizations by insisting that an always-emerging cultural vocabulary is itself rooted in and grows out of a deep and relatively stable soil of unannounced assumptions sedimented over generations into the language, customs, and life forms of a living tradition.1 I argue that the failure to acknowledge this fundamental character of cultural difference as

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an erstwhile safeguard against the sins of either “essentialism” or “relativism” is not innocent. Indeed, like the preacher who, come Monday, commits the very sins he railed against the day before, this antagonism to cultural generalizations leads to the uncritical essentializing of our own contingent cultural assumptions and to the insinuating of them into our interpretations of other traditions.2 David Keightley, in his reflections on the meaning and value of death in the classical Chinese tradition, concludes that death in this culture is rather “unproblematic.”3 Of course, Keightley is not suggesting that the end of life was approached absent some real trepidation by Chinese soldiers and their mothers alike. He means, rather, that death was not considered unnatural, perverse, or horrible. Indeed, the concept of “natural” death in early China can readily be contrasted with the enormity of death in the Abrahamic traditions, in which “death” itself is a consequence of divine animus. In this latter tradition, “death” is the punishment meted out by an angry god to human beings for their hubris and disobedience—human beings who, in their prelapsarian state, had owned God’s gift of immortality. There is certainly an uneasiness in the early Chinese literature manifested in visions of the “Yellow Springs,” a familiar name for the netherworld, but there is a marked absence of the morbidity and gloom we associate with the Greek, Roman, and medieval conceptions of death. In the classical Chinese world, there is a preponderant emphasis on “life,” with little attention given over to the tragedy and poignancy of death familiar in classical Western sources. Rather than a gruesome portrayal of death, there seems to be a Chinese tolerance of the end of life as an inevitable and relatively unremarkable aspect of the human experience.4 Again, from the sparse remnants of the body of militarist literature circulating in pre-Qin China, we are able to make some compelling observations about the value of death in ancient Chinese culture as it pertains to the battlefield specifically. For example, the military texts begin generally from the Sunzi’s premise that warfare is always a losing proposition and that, as such, it should be embarked upon as “budeyi 不得已”—that is, only with the greatest reluctance and as an always wasteful, if sometimes unavoidable, last resort. From this premise we can understand why soldiery was historically accorded a low social status in this culture, and we might further speculate that, sans the vision of military glory promoted by the Spartans and Romans, the relentless agony of battle punctuating the Warring States period was little mitigated for the Chinese soldier by the spirit of a heroic—even romantic—death we find associated with warfare in our own classical Western narrative.5 In order to dig deeper, and to understand the value of death within the cultural semantics of ancient China without overwriting its meaning with very different Western presuppositions, we must locate the phenomenon of death within the evolving correlative cosmology of its own tradition.

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Nathan Sivin observes that “man’s prodigious creativity seems to be based on the permutations and recastings of a rather small stock of ideas.”6 I will argue that the correlative thinking first described by Marcel Granet as la pensée chinoise seems to belong to this small but fertile inventory, and that it has had a long history of articulation in the Chinese cultural tradition that parallels the defining force of metaphysical realism in shaping the categories and grammar of the Western philosophical narrative.7 What, then, is the vintage and the resilience of correlative thinking in the protoChinese world? What in the early Chinese lived-world, we might ask, propelled “the permutations and recastings” of the persistent correlative kind of thinking as it spread from centers of specific domains of knowledge to become an explanatory vocabulary in so many areas of ordinary Chinese activity—medical practices, fengshui, calligraphy and painting, architecture and gardens, literary tropes and style, mantic practices, culinary preparations, ritual performances, and so on? And more specifically, we might ask, to what extent was the passion, exhilaration, and terror of war a motivating factor as this dyadic way of thinking deepened, matured, and became explicit in the formative period of Chinese culture? William James, himself a process thinker, provides us with his own reflections on cultural persistence. As a liberated, post-Darwinian pragmatist, he is determined to overcome our entrenched rationalist and empiricist ways of organizing the human experience, which he believes have saddled us philosophically with a “block universe”—his expression for a ready-made world devoid of any real novelty or spontaneity. By attempting to reinstate “process”—that is, the relevance of change, particularity, and the ongoing emergence of an always novel order—James is trying to take us beyond default assumptions about some foundational, permanent, and transcendent realities that have insinuated themselves over millennia into our language and worldview. But even in thus trying to escape the dead hand of permanence, James is keenly aware that a sensitivity to the reality of change must itself be qualified by cognizance of a persistence or “equilibrium” in human ways of rationalizing the life experience, which he calls “common sense.” He offers us this observation: “My thesis now is this, that our fundamental ways of thinking about things are discoveries of exceedingly remote ancestors, which have been able to preserve themselves throughout the experience of all subsequent time. They form one great stage of equilibrium in the human mind’s development, the stage of common sense.”8 James then goes on to rehearse what he takes to be the basic categories of this entrenched “common sense,” this distilled wisdom passed on by our progenitors: “things, kinds, sameness or difference, minds, bodies, subjects and attributes, causal influence, the fancied, the real,” and so on. Although we might be critical of James for taking the familiar categories of our own common sense—indeed, the default vocabulary of metaphysical realism—as defining of the entire human narrative without taking cultural specificity into account, his basic point about the thickness

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of culture is still well taken.9 Sedimented across the centuries into our ways of thinking and living is a persistent and deep stratum, an abiding internal impulse that grounds more apparent changes. To be sure, this “common sense” has itself always been vulnerable to the ineluctable process of change, but relatively speaking it is also resilient and enduring. Nietzsche, aware that cultural specificity does make a difference in the formation and content of this deep stratum, describes it as a “philosophy of grammar” that is peculiar to different language groups. In reporting on the Indo-European languages, he observes: The strange family resemblance of all Indian, Greek, and German philosophizing is explained easily enough. Where there is an affinity of languages, it cannot fail, owing to the common philosophy of grammar—I mean, owing to the unconscious domination and guidance by similar grammatical functions—that everything is prepared at the outset for a similar development and sequence of philosophical systems; just as the way seems barred against certain other possibilities of world-interpretation.10 Such observations as these by James and Nietzsche might occasion a reconsideration of our usual way of thinking about the contributions of our own great philosophers. Without slighting their defining persistence, to what extent in the “history of thought” are Plato and Aristotle, for example, constructing their philosophical systems out of whole cloth and to what extent are they—with penetrating insight, certainly—only making explicit what is already implicated in the structure and function of the language they have inherited from their ancestors? In what degree are they cultural archaeologists who are only “discovering” and “recovering” their legacy of “common sense,” their own “philosophy of grammar?” A corollary to the Nietzschean thesis that grammar to a real degree promotes and constrains patterns of thought is that disparate cultures are going to have different “philosophies of grammar.” Indeed, the Cambridge rhetorician I. A. Richards, in reflecting on the difficulties of moving from one cultural “common sense” to another—from our own Western narrative to classical China, in his case—also worries that “analysis” as a methodology might well be smuggling in a worldview and way of thinking quite alien to the early Chinese corpus: Our Western tradition provides us with an elaborate apparatus of universals, particulars, substances, attributes, abstracts, concretes, generalities, specificities, properties, qualities, relations, complexes, accidents, essences, organic wholes, sums, classes, individuals, concrete universals, objects, events, forms, contents, etc. Mengzi . . .

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gets along without any of this and with nothing at all definite to take its place. Apart entirely from the metaphysics that we are only too likely to bring in with this machinery, the practical difficulty arises that by applying it we deform his thinking. . . . The danger to be guarded against is our tendency to force a structure, which our special kind of Western training (idealist, realist, positivist, Marxist, etc.) makes easiest for us to work with, upon modes of thinking which may very well not have any such structure at all—and which may not be capable of being analysed by means of this kind of logical machinery.11 Again, it is the familiar vocabulary of metaphysical realism assumed in the categories of “common sense” announced by James—a way of thinking that privileges “analysis” as a methodology—that Richards identifies as our own default apparatus that we unawares bring to our understanding of the classical Chinese corpus. What, then, is the “common sense”—the deep cultural stratum, the uncommon assumptions—of the ancient Chinese worldview? In his lifetime study of Shang dynasty divinatory practices, Keightley claims that “the origins of much that is thought to be characteristically Chinese may be identified in the ethos and world view of its Bronze Age diviners.”12 Indeed, “it is possible for the modern historian to infer from the archaeological, artistic, and written records of the Shang some of the theoretical strategies and presuppositions by which the Bronze Age elite of the closing centuries of the second millennium BC ordered their existence.”13 Keightley would insist that certain presuppositions of Shang culture evolved to become further articulated in what we take to be the formative period of classical Chinese philosophy: The glimpse that the oracle-bones inscriptions afford us of metaphysical conceptions in the eleventh and tenth centuries BC suggests that the philosophical tensions that we associate primarily with the Taoism and Confucianism of Eastern Chou [Zhou] had already appeared, in different form, in the intellectual history of China, half a millennium earlier.14 Like Nietzsche, Keightley perceives the structure of language itself to be a resource that can be mined to reveal a vein of cultural assumptions and importances: “Without necessarily invoking the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis of linguistic relativity, one can still imagine that the grammar of the Shang inscriptions has much to tell us about Shang conceptions of reality, particularly about the forces of nature.”15 What, then, are these specific underlying assumptions that Keightley has identified and recovered in his archaeology of Shang dynasty culture?

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Keightley contrasts a Chinese cosmology of ceaseless process with a classical Greek worldview in which a metaphysical transcendentalism guarantees an ideal reality: Put crudely, we find in classical Greece a Platonic metaphysics of certainties, ideal forms, and right answers, accompanied by complex, tragic, and insoluble tensions in the realm of ethics. The metaphysical foundations being firm, the moral problems were intensely real, and as inexplicable as reality itself. To the early Chinese, however, if reality was forever changeable, man could not assume a position of tragic grandeur and maintain his footing for long. The moral heroism of the Confucians of Eastern Chou [Zhou] was not articulated in terms of any tragic flaw in the nature of the world or man. This lack of articulation, I believe, may be related to a significant indifference to the metaphysical foundation of Confucian ethics.16 Positively, Keightley ascribes to these divinatory sources what is today being described by interpreters of classical China as a distinctively Chinese mode of “correlative thinking.” According to his reading, oracle-bone divination subscribed to “a theology and metaphysics that conceived of a world of alternating modes, pessimistic at times, optimistic at others, but with the germs of one mode always inherent in the other. Shang metaphysics, at least as revealed in the complementary forms of the Wu Ting [Ding] inscriptions, was a metaphysics of yin and yang.”17 Keightley appeals to the pien-hua [bianhua 變化] understanding of this process of change as articulated in the “Great Commentary” to the Yijing—a rhythm of “alternation and transformation”—as a later expression of the modality of change already present in Shang dynasty metaphysics. This notion of change is articulated in the language of symbiotic bipolar opposites that entail each other and together constitute the whole.18 The origins of correlative thinking, which date back to at least the Shang dynasty, lie in a modality of thinking that advances in both complexity and explanatory force through a proliferation and aggregation of productive dyadic associations, novel metaphors, suggestive images, and evocative patterns, all of which are weighed, measured, and tested in ordinary experience. What, then, has been the role of warfare in the evolution and articulation of this correlative mode of thinking? Given the temper of the late Eastern Zhou times, we should not be surprised to learn from the court bibliographies of the Han dynasty histories—a record the respect for which is enhanced by knowing it was kept under the auspices of literati who were not always sympathetic to their martial colleagues—that the military texts in circulation during this early period constituted a body of literature that, in its sheer quantity, far exceeded

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the known Confucian corpus. We should also be sure to notice that almost all of the pre-Qin philosophical texts on occasion turn to often-substantial reflections on the role of warfare in defining the human experience. The undisputable importance of these various military documents in their own time has recently led several distinguished scholars to trace the elaboration of seminal philosophical ideas—ideas that have conventionally been ascribed to the more-speculative philosophers of the period—back to these early martial texts, and then again back to the unending military conflicts that informed the content of these documents. As Plato tells us, “Necessity is the mother of invention.”19 One such redescription of the military texts’ intellectual contribution was introduced by Li Zehou 李澤厚 and has more recently been endorsed and elaborated upon by He Bingdi 何炳棣. With the help of Li and He, we can seek answers to our two pressing questions: What, specifically, has been the role of warfare in the maturation of correlative thinking, and what has been the influence of correlative thinking on deeply held assumptions about death and dying? Li argues first that the terms of the distinctive correlative dialectic we have come to associate with pre-Qin thinking have their origins and found their development in close observation of the character of everyday experience and actual life circumstances rather than in some more abstract and rarified theoretical or linguistic discourse. Second, rehearsing the myriad battles that are associated with cultural heroes and that are remembered throughout historical texts, Li insists that the scourge of war has been an integral and persistent aspect of Chinese life from earliest times. On Li’s measure, it was this intense drama of war more than any other dimension of the human experience, with survival itself always in the balance, that brought a vital urgency to the investigation of our lived world’s correlative character. Indeed, it is the complementarity of life-and-death itself—perhaps the most fundamental among the increasingly complex manifold of bipolar dyads appealed to in the correlative dialectics of ancient China—that in the opening lines of the Sunzi sets the frame of reference for the entire text: “War is a vital matter of state. It is the field on which life or death (sisheng 死生) is determined and the road that leads to either survival or ruin (cunwang 存亡), and must be examined with the greatest care.”20 In the extant military texts, we discover a distinctive and elaborate correlative dialectic that, in its immediate appeal to the unadorned detail of concrete circumstances, reveals little patience for more-abstract and inconclusive hypotheticals. In the planning and execution of war, there is a general prohibition against those speculative religious and mythological considerations that would distract attention from empirical detail and promote unfounded expectations. The shifting dynamic of battlefield experience revealed to its participants the mutuality and complementarity of opposites and, through trial, reflection, refinement, and application, evolved

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a growing insight into the correlative logic of actual experience as well as a growing confidence that such insight can be crucial in determining a successful outcome.21 What, then, is this correlative thinking? Stated simply, correlative thinking begins by unraveling the relational tensions that obtain among things and events—“thises and thats”—in an attempt to fully understand the prevailing circumstances. Then, on the basis of this concrete information, it attempts through productive correlations to take optimum advantage of the creative possibilities inherent in that particular situation. Correlative thinking, thus, is the use of one’s imagination to coordinate what is local, immediate, and actual with the productive possibilities that can be discerned through the application of dyadic images. Joseph Needham describes the cosmological assumptions behind this correlative thinking in the following terms: In coordinative thinking, conceptions are not subsumed under one another, but placed side by side in a pattern, and things influence one another not by acts of mechanical causation, but by a kind of “inductance.” . . . The key word in Chinese thought is Order and above all Pattern (and, if I may whisper it for the first time, Organism). The symbolic correlations or correspondences all formed part of one colossal pattern. Things behaved in particular ways not necessarily because of prior actions or impulsions of other things, but because their position in the ever-moving cyclical universe was such that they were endowed with intrinsic natures which made that behaviour inevitable for them. If they did not behave in those particular ways they would lose their relational positions in the whole (which made them what they were), and turn into something other than themselves. They were thus parts in existential dependence upon the whole world-organism. And they reacted upon one another not so much by mechanical impulsion or causation as by a kind of mysterious resonance.22 By contrast with this Chinese cosmology, the preassigned teleological design that we might associate with either external “Nature” or internal (but externally endowed) “nature” makes causality retrospective, necessary, and linear, a process that entails closure and satisfaction. When we apply inductive or deductive reasoning, we are attempting to abstract the logical relations governing a particular situation and evaluate their truth values through a process of logical inference. The motivation, presumably, is to discern the causal laws determining a particular situation with scientific clarity and, on that basis, anticipate the outcome. Correlative thinking does not exclude the reductionistic thinking of scientific explanation, but

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rather offers imagination as its complement. Said another way, science is much more than the application of rational structures. As Angus Graham describes the function of correlative thinking in the Yijing, “An openness to chance influences loosing thought from preconceptions is indispensable to creative thinking. In responding to new and complex situations it is a practical necessity to shake up habitual schemes and wake to new correlations of similarities and connexions.”23 To be clear, the Yijing—as a text that advocates the importance of correlative thinking as an antidote to “the hardening of the categories”—provides us with an opportunity to think outside the proverbial box. As Graham further observes: “Plainly the Yi is relevant, not to scientific explanation, but to the unexpected insight into a similarity or connexion which sparks off discovery, in the sciences as elsewhere.”24 Correlative thinking is the application of what David Hall and I have called ars contexualis—“the art of contextualizing”—to a given situation in pursuit of a prospective harmony, which seeks to maximize its creative possibilities. This holistic process entails continuing disclosure and builds toward consummation.25 Idealities, instead of being predetermined and programmed, are “ideas” or “possibilities” pregnant within the concrete, actual circumstances; they can be discerned with imagination and can be animated and made real with effort. Each “thing” or “event” is focal as a configuration of unique relations, relations that are also constitutive of other “things” and “events” when entertained from different foci. We might augment Li Zehou’s claim about the importance of war in defining the philosophical terms of art by reflecting on militarist assumptions about causality. Central to military philosophy is the perception that any particular event is sponsored by a fluid calculus of factors captured in the idea termed shi 勢, which defies translation into the linear causality that predominates within the English language. Shi describes the continuing dynamic of all the factors that are at play in any particular situation— circumstances, configuration, momentum, authority, propensity, timing, force, leverage, weight, velocity, precision, a triggering device, and so on— and that can be coordinated to allow for relational advantage. Importantly, this notion of shi was initially a key military term connoting the strategic advantage or “purchase” that is achieved relative to the enemy through exploiting differentials in information, terrain, morale, training, logistics, supplies, weaponry, and so on. In the military texts, shi has been captured with different images: the power of the crossbow bolt controlled by a tiny trigger but able to pierce an enemy from a distance that itself serves as protection; the unstoppable force of round logs and boulders thundering down a steep ravine; a bird of prey swooping downward and striking another animal out of the sky.26 The term is subsequently appropriated in the later philosophical literature

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wherein, for the Confucianism of Xunzi, for example, it is claimed that shi refers to a moral character that creates political advantage.27 Shi, a fundamentally aesthetic notion, is “compositional” in at least two senses. Self and enemy are coterminous and mutually entailing, thus making available the possibility of “com-positioning” and thereby reconfiguring the situation to one’s advantage. We are able to redefine ourselves and the enemy by coordinating shared relations and replacing the present configuration of relations to precipitate an advantage on one side at the expense of the other. To take an example, if our army is evenly matched by the enemy’s, we can rehearse possible ways of compensating for this stalemate by reflecting on relevant holistic and complementary dyads that might be recalibrated to turn the always-fluid pattern of circumstances to our advantage. Strategically, we can seek inspiration in the reconfiguring dyads such as far and near (jinyuan 近遠), strong and weak (qiangruo 強弱), large and small (daxiao 大小), regular and irregular attacks (zhengqi 正奇), vital and tangential assets (qingzhong 輕重), arrogance and humility (jiaobei 驕卑), concentrated and dispersed (zhuansan 專散), offensive and defensive postures (gongshou 攻守), wisdom and stupidity (zhiyu 智愚), taking and giving (取予), victory and defeat (shengbai 勝敗), and so on. In the opening chapter of the Sun Bin, the text’s namesake provides Tian Ji—commander of the Qi forces—with advice based upon precisely these dyads, enabling the Qi troops ultimately to defeat Pang Juan, commander of the Wei army. At the time, the Qi and Wei armies were evenly matched in troop numbers. First, Sun Bin suggests feigning ineptitude in warfare by sacrificing Qi’s expendable troops to embolden the Wei enemy. Dividing Qi’s main forces into smaller units to conceal the army’s full strength, Qi then provokes the now confident Wei enemy by first dispatching lightly armed chariots to attack the Wei capital at Daliang. The Qi army then falls immediately upon and destroys the main Wei army that, having been weakened by abandoning its supplies and artillery, is being force-marched home over a long distance in order to protect its heartland. By orchestrating a reconfiguration of these various dyads, Sun Bin is able to make far into near, strong into weak, tangential into vital, and so on, thereby guiding Qi to victory.28 This correlative strategy for understanding and influencing a situation is fundamentally aesthetic, requiring as a first step the full consideration of all the details that produce the totality of the present, actual effect. The military texts put less stress on precepts and more on acquiring and exploiting total information gained by any means and at any cost. A comprehensive understanding of the actual circumstances empowers the imagination to register and to take advantage of the full range of possibilities inherent

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within the dynamics of the actual circumstances in order to orchestrate the production of welcome outcomes. This analogical mode of thinking is radically empirical in that it fundamentally respects particularity, ultimately requiring the adaptation of any abstract considerations to the specific details governing an always-unique situation. Just to be clear, such an assertion about correlative thinking—one that emphasizes holistic aesthetic sensibilities, imagination, and a preoccupation with the concrete and practical—is holistic rather than exclusive. It does not (as the caricature of this position frequently asserts) preclude appeal to rationality, abstraction, inference, generalizations, or theoretical models, precisely those conditions of thinking that are often uncritically assumed by some to be the only kind of thinking. Rather, in correlative thinking, these more-abstractive considerations would be redefined and revalorized as being functional assets or tools that can serve us best only when they are made ultimately responsible to the particular experiential context. How does the imagination work here? Chinese cosmology begins from the autogenerative nature of transformation, without appeal to the conception of external causal laws. The energy of change lies within the pattern of relations that constitutes the world itself: the world is spontaneously so of itself (ziran 自然). The dyadic tensions through which the patterns of change are expressed are many and can be captured in a contingent range of images. By first identifying and appreciating these tensions, we can find the latitude in them that enables us to orchestrate an everyday circumstance—relating to the family, the community, or the battlefield—into its most productive configuration. In the Sunzi, we find a proliferation of images that define actual circumstances and that provide a potential handle on the dynamics of change. Li Zehou argues that a truly extensive pattern of dyads originates in a reflection upon the concrete details of military affairs. When we turn to the Daodejing, there is both a sustained reflection on the use of the military that in large degree echoes the militarist texts, and a considerable terminological overlap with them. However, there is also an extension of these bipolar dyads—often more conceptual and abstract—that has a broader political and cosmological application.29 In addition, there is a concerted challenge to many conventional correlations associated with mainstream political philosophy that the Daodejing takes as the ultimate source of war and conflict—for example, the assumed relationship between hard and soft, full and empty, sagacity and stupidity, life and death, law and chaos, knowledge and speech, war and peace, ruling and being ruled, and so on. Probing deeper into this correlative cosmology as a source of the prevailing cultural assumptions with respect to death, we discover in ancient

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China a concerted focus on life in the here-and-now rather than speculation on the conditions beyond the grave. As Tang Junyi observes: When Chinese philosophers speak of the world, they are thinking of the world that we are living in. There is no world beyond or outside of the one we are experiencing. . . . They are not referencing “a world” or “the world” but are simply saying “world as such” without putting any indefinite or definite article in front of it.30 Without appeal to the concept of an immortal soul that belongs to some higher reality beyond this world, the naturalistic default position is to make the most of what is available in this world. Without the kind of teleology that promises a predetermined future existence, participation in and achievement of a sustained, usually local harmony in this world remains the ultimate focus of life. Tang, in searching for language to characterize this early Chinese cosmology, captures the pervasive sense of continuity in his proposition of “the inseparability of the one and the many, of uniqueness and multivalence, of continuity and multiplicity, of integrity and integration (yiduo bufenguan 一多不分觀).”31 What he means by this expression is that if we begin our reflection on the emergence of cosmic order from the wholeness of lived experience, we can view this experience in terms of both its dynamic continuities and its manifold multiplicity, as both a processual flow and an ongoing series of distinct consummatory events. This is one more example of the mutual implication of binaries that characterizes all phenomena in the natural world—in this case, particularity and totality. That is, any particular phenomenon in our field of experience can be focused in different ways: on the one hand, it is a unique and persistent particular; on the other, it has the entire cosmos and all that is happening implicated within its own intrinsic pattern of relationships. This person is uniquely who she is as distinct from other people, yet her relational magnitude is such that in giving a full accounting of the social, natural, and cultural relationships that constitute her, we must exhaust the cosmos. A process worldview is one of radical contextuality, wherein the embedded particular and its context are at once continuous and distinct. This focus-field relationship is captured in the language of daode 道 德— the field of experience (dao) and the myriad insistent particulars (de) that constitute it—as another way to express the inseparability of the one and the many. In the Yijing, this sense of the mutuality of oneness and manyness is captured in the image of the four seasons that are at once distinct from one another and yet continuous: “In their flux (bian 變) and their continuity (tong 通) the processes of nature are a counterpart to the four seasons.”32 This notion of the inseparability of continuity and multiplicity is

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necessary to understand the claim we find throughout the early philosophical literature about the “oneness” of things, or of becoming “one” with things, often stated as a kind of achievement. The contemporary philosopher Pang Pu provides us with language that clarifies this notion of cosmological continuity. In his explanation of this process of ceaseless “procreating (sheng 生)” captured in the Yijing as “shengsheng buxi 生生不息,” he makes an illuminating distinction. “Paisheng 派生” is authoring, birthing, originating in the sense that one thing creates something as an independent existent, like a hen producing an egg or an oak tree producing an acorn. “Huasheng 化生,” on the other hand, is one thing transforming into something else, like summer becoming autumn or a caterpillar becoming a butterfly. In the paisheng “derivation” sensibility, the egg goes on to become another hen, and the acorn to become another oak tree, whereas in the huasheng “transmutation” sensibility, most eggs become omelets and most acorns become squirrels. A creatio ex nihilo variation on the paisheng derivation sensibility has predominated in our own persistent, Aristotelian cosmological assumptions— the hen reproduces its own essence or, in the human case, the child has its own soul, an essential identity independent of the parent. Knowledge, therefore, lies in being able to identify and categorize the progeny: to say what it essentially “is” (L. esse). In the Chinese qi cosmology, on the hand, these two senses of “procreating” qualify each other. Importantly, the putative discreteness and independence entailed by paisheng is qualified by the processual and contextual assumptions of huasheng; the processual continuity of huasheng is punctuated as unique “events” by the consummatory nature of paisheng. Expressed concretely in the metaphor of family that is pervasive within the Chinese cosmological order, neither uniqueness nor continuity will yield to the other. The notion of intrinsic relationality that allows for the uniqueness and distinctiveness of particular members of the family on the one hand, and for the continuity that obtains among them on the other, disqualifies part-whole analysis and requires instead a gestalt shift to focus-field thinking—a nonanalytic mode in which “part” and “totality” are respective foregrounding and backgrounding perspectives on the same phenomenon. In pursuing this distinction between “derivation” and “transformation,” Pang is alerting us to a further refinement in our understanding of the relationship between what comes before and what follows in the ongoing processes of life and death. Whereas we might be inclined to understand the progenitor/progeny genealogy as a series in which there is quite literally an “essential” independence of the latter from the former, early Chinese cosmology on reflection is clearly a combination of both paisheng and huasheng, taking the progenitor as giving way to this unique progeny but at the same time as proliferating and living on within its progeny. In this cosmology,

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there is a strong sense of genealogical continuity wherein the progeny is to be understood as the foregrounding of this unique person in a continuing flow of procreation—a unique and particular current in a particular stream. We might look at naming conventions for illustration. A “proper” name is by definition “one’s own” name (paisheng), but in a Chinese world one’s complex of names is profoundly relational and processual (huasheng). One’s family name is the first and continuing source of identity, whereas one’s given name (ming 名) proliferates with assumed style names (zi 字), sobriquets (hao 號), and a web of specific family designations (such as “uncle number two” [ershu 二叔] and “auntie number three” [sanzhou 三妯]) and professional titles (such as “teacher” [laoshi 老師] or “director” [zhuren 主任]) even in the course of one’s lifetime and with posthumous titles (shi 謚) after it, reflecting the unfolding contribution one has been able to make to family and community over time. For someone who lives within this correlative sensibility, several assumptions about death and dying are commonsensical. In the ceaseless process of transformation, death is both natural and inevitable. At the same time, the trauma of death is attenuated in degree by a strong sense of continuity within the constitutive web of family and community relations. This sense of persistence is much in evidence from the funerary material culture in which a powerful belief seems to be that life after death is a direct extension of life in this world—that is, death is not a release from, but a continuation of, the social, political, and economic conditions that govern the life we are presently living. In the tombs excavated over the past generation or so, we discover that buried with those deceased who enjoy a well-provided death are articles used in everyday living: clothing and jewelry, combs and mirrors, utensils and lacquerware dishes, foodstuffs, and, indeed, an abundance of reading material for the journey to I-knownot-where. The deceased were being provided with an environment as close to that of the living as possible. As Mu-chou Poo points out, “Since the burials differ only in the degree of material richness, not in fundamental conception and structure, it stands to reason that we assume a more or less homogeneous religious belief among the rich and the poor in society.”33 The persisting structure of ancestor worship also seems to make the continuity of this parallel afterlife dependent—in important degree—upon the sacrificial activities of the living who continue to remember their dead. This memory is made tangible in a never-ending stream of food and “money” transmitted by the living to the ancestral world through regular ritual practices. After all, the dead, like the living, occupied a place within a bureaucratically structured world that paralleled the world of the living and as such had to pay their taxes and take care of avaricious officials.34 According to Poo, “for the dead in the nether world, happiness meant a life abundant with all the necessities of life.”35

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Indeed, important for understanding death in this culture is the cognate relationship between “perishing” wang 亡 and “forgetting” wang 忘, a relationship made explicit in the Daodejing. There is a strong sense that death occurs not when one dies but when one is forgotten. In a cultural tradition in which persons are understood to be constituted by the pattern of roles and relationships configured throughout the narrative of their lives, the answer to the question of what is lost and what is left is an important one. As long as a person is remembered, he or she has a place and a life. The emphasis on genealogical continuity, the ethic of family reverence, the cultural requisite of returning the body to the ancestors intact, the elaborate structure of Chinese funerary rites, and the role of ancestor worship as the primary religious observance are all an expression of this social memory. On the contrary, “not being around,” “being exiled,” and “disappearing” are all ways of dying while still being otherwise alive. Hence, the interchangeability of “to perish” wang 亡 and “to be forgotten” wang 忘 is found in the alternative Wang Bi and Mawangdui redactions of Daodejing 33, respectively: 不失其所者久 死而不亡（忘）者壽。 Not losing one’s place is to be long enduring; Dying and yet not perishing [or “not being forgotten”] is to be long-lived. The acceptability of the variants here among scholars would suggest that “perishing” and “being forgotten” are not contradictory, and that the line can be read either way because of this immediate connection between being alive and being remembered, and perishing and being forgotten.36 What I mean is that “dead” people can continue to live on (such as in the cases of the cultural heroes Kongzi and Laozi), and “living” people can be the walking “dead”—people who are banished or whose ancestral lineage is broken or who are erased from court records for their crimes. There is an important corollary to the connection between perishing and being forgotten. If we turn this conjunction the other way around, death can be vanquished, in some degree, through living a life that is memorable and will be celebrated by generations of both ancestors and progeny. By making the most of the opportunities that life brings with it and by bringing distinction to one’s family and community, one is reinforcing a persistence that keeps death at bay. Certainly, this would be paramount in the mind of the soldier, who is risking his life to protect the continuity of his own ancestral lineage. However, living life fully is not to be confused with an excessive and detrimental preoccupation with life. In looking at death from a classical Daoist point of view that shares an intimate relationship with the militarist texts, Daodejing 50 is frequently cited:

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ROGER T. AMES 出生入死, 生之徒, 十有三, 死之徒, 十有三, 而民生生動皆之 死地, 亦十有三。夫何故？以其生生也。 In the cycle of life and death, About a third are the companions of life, About a third are the companions of death, And one third again are people who, because of their preoccupation with staying alive, Move toward the execution ground with each and every step. How so? Simply because of their preoccupation with staying alive.

In the world that this classical Daoist text reports upon, people can be expected to divide into three fairly equal groups: those who live out their natural lives; those who succumb to an early death because of disease, famine, war, or some other unfortunate circumstance; and, finally, those who would belong to the first group but, because of their excessive preoccupation with staying alive, join the second group in meeting with a premature end. Excess is dangerous, and thus the sage spurns the extreme, the extravagant, and the excessive. Life and death, like all the correlative relationships that organize our world—including long and short, high and low, difficult and easy, old and young, and so on—are continuous and mutually entailing, so that being preoccupied with one at the expense of the other introduces an abnormality that challenges the natural balance and cadence of life. As Daodejing 75 reports, “it is precisely they who do not kill themselves in living who are more enlightened than they who treasure life.” Further, for the more reflective and philosophical persons living under the sway of this correlative cosmology—the authors of the Zhuangzi come immediately to mind—the ongoing processes of life and death are attended with a palpable optimism. There is an unannounced acknowledgment that life could not be what it is if it were not for the anticipation of death. That is, without death in its broadest sense, life would be static, transparent, predictable, and tedious. Death is the indeterminate aspect attending the life experience that makes its process, change, complexity, and novelty possible and, as such, can be understood as a positive, enabling presence rather than as a negative, disabling absence. Death so understood does not inhibit or subvert life but stimulates and drives it, making it more intense, delicious, and poignant. Indeed, for those close to Zhuangzi, the only injunction would be, “Enjoy the ride!”37

NOTES 1. The discussion of “thick cultural generalizations” is further elaborated upon in my Confucian Role Ethics: A Vocabulary, forthcoming from Chinese University Press.

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2. One might argue that the bugbear of “essentialism” is itself a culturally specific worry. Essentialism arises from familiar classical Greek assumptions about ontology as “the science of being” and from the application of strict identity (or “essences”) as the principle of individuation that follows from such an ontology. The well-intended and hugely erudite scholar Zhang Longxi 張隆溪 is concerned that the assertion of radical difference which he quite properly ascribes to my interpretation of Chinese language and culture leads to “relativism” and thus incommensurability. In promoting his alternative version of cultural translation, he insists: Against such an overemphasis on difference and cultural uniqueness, however, I would like to argue for the basic translatability of languages and cultures. . . . Only when we acknowledge different peoples and nations as equal in their ability to think, to express, to communicate, and to create values, we may then rid ourselves of ethnocentric biases. (“Translating Cultures: China and the West,” Chinese Thought in a Global Context: A Dialogue between Chinese and Western Philosophical Approaches, ed. Karl-Heinz Pohl [Leiden: Brill, 1999], 46) The claim about being “equal” in the ability to think might sound inclusive and liberating, but in reality it is anything but innocent. Why would we assume that the possibility other traditions have culturally specific modalities of thinking entails a claim that that they do not know how to think, unless we believe that our way of thinking is, in fact, the only way? Further, the uncritical assumption that other cultures must think the same way that I do is for me the very definition of ethnocentrism. I would argue that it is precisely the recognition and appreciation of the degree of difference obtaining among cultures that properly motivates cultural translation in the first place and that ultimately rewards the effort. Indeed, arguing that there are culturally contingent modalities of thinking can be pluralistic rather than relativistic and accommodating rather than condescending. At the very least, we must strive with imagination to take other cultures on their own terms if comparative studies is to provide us with the mutual enrichment that it promises. 3. David N. Keightley, “Early Civilization in China: Reflections on How It Became Chinese,” in Heritage of China: Contemporary Perspectives on Chinese Civilization, ed. Paul S. Ropp (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1990), 33. 4. A. C. Graham makes this same point. The Zhuangzi’s discussion of confronting the problem of death “is quite without the morbidity of the stress on corruptibility in the late-Medieval art of Europe, which reminds of the horrors of mortality for the good of our souls.” See Graham, Disputers of the Tao (La Salle, Ill.: Open Court, 1989), 203. 5. In Ruan Ji’s 阮籍 Essay on Music 樂論, written in the third century, following the fall of the Han dyansty, we read that “the custom of the states of Chu and Yue was to esteem military bravery, and thus their habit was to treat death lightly.” But again from the perspective of the central states, this was the attitude of southern barbarians who did not have the benefit of the sages and their proper Confucian civilization. See Reed Andrew Criddle, “Rectifying Lasciviousness through Mystical Learning: An Exposition and Translation of Ruan Ji’s Essay on Music,” Asian Music (Summer/Fall 2007): 55.

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6. Nathan Sivin, Foreword to Manfred Porkert, The Theoretical Foundations of Chinese Medicine (Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press, 1974), xi. 7. Marcel Granet, La pensée chinoise (Paris: Albin Michel, 1934). 8. William James, Pragmatism and Other Writings, ed. Giles Gunn (New York: Penguin, 2000), 76. 9. John Dewey, in rehearsing the pre-Darwinian history of Western philosophy, claims that “few words in our language foreshorten intellectual history as much as does the word species” (“The Influence of Darwin on Philosophy,” in The Essential Dewey, ed. Larry A. Hickman and Thomas M. Alexander [Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1998] 1:40)—that is, the notion of eidos rendered “idea” or “form” in Plato and “species” in Aristotle. Unfortunately, Dewey, like his mentor James, fails to take cultural differences into account when he universalizes the metaphysical realism that follows from this notion of eidos as a kind of human common sense: “The human mind, deliberately as it were, exhausted the logic of the changeless, the final and the transcendent, before it essayed adventure on the pathless wastes of generation and transformation” (41; emphasis mine). 10. Friedrich Nietzsche, Beyond Good and Evil, trans. W. Kaufmann (New York: Vintage, 1966), 20. 11. I. A. Richards, Mencius on the Mind (New York: Harcourt, Brace, and Co., 1932), 89, 91–92. 12. David N. Keightley, “Shang Divination and Metaphysics,” Philosophy East and West 38.4 (October 1988): 389. Keightley here is positing a position shared by several of our most distinguished interpreters of the Shang dynasty, including Kwangchih Chang, “Some Dualistic Phenomena in Shang Society,” Journal of Asian Studies 24.1 (November 1964): 45–61, and Marcel Granet, “Right and Left in China,” in Right and Left: Essays on Dual Symbolic Classification, ed. Rodney Needham (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1977). 13. Keightley, “Shang Divination and Metaphysics,” 367. 14. Keightley, “Shang Divination and Metaphysics,” 388. 15. Keightley, “Shang Divination and Metaphysics,” 389, n. 1. 16. Keightley, “Shang Divination and Metaphysics,” 376. 17. Keightley, “Shang Divination and Metaphysics,” 377. 18. Keightley, “Shang Divination and Metaphysics,” 374–375. 19. The Republic Book II 369c. Mark Twain’s revision has it that “necessity is the mother of taking chances.” 20. Roger T. Ames, trans., Sun-tzu: The Art of Warfare (New York: Ballantine, 1993), 103. 21. Li Zehou 李澤厚, Zhongguo gudai sixiang shilun 中國古代思想史論 [A history of ancient Chinese thought], rev. ed. (Taipei: Fongyun shidai chuban gongsi, 1990), 90–95. 22. Joseph Needham, Science and Civilisation in China (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1954), 2:280–281. 23. Graham, Disputers of the Tao, 368. 24. Graham, Disputers of the Tao, 369. 25, David L. Hall and Roger T. Ames, Thinking from the Han: Self, Truth, and Transcendence in Chinese and Western Culture (Albany: State University of New York Press, 1998), 39–43, 111–112.

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26. Ames, Sun-tzu, 118–121. 27. John Knoblock, trans., Xunzi: A Translation and Study of the Complete Works (Stanford, Calif.: Stanford University Press, 1990), 2:221ff, 241ff. 28. D. C. Lau and Roger T. Ames, trans., Sun Bin: The Art of Warfare (Albany: State University of New York Press, 2003), 91–93. 29. He Bingdi 何炳棣 wants to take this relationship between the two texts—the Sunzi and the Daodejing—a step further in mounting a substantial textual argument that the Daodejing in many places is derivative of the Sunzi and thus should be dated after it (Youguan Sunzi Laozi de sanpian kaozheng 有關孫子老子的三篇考 證 [Three evidential studies on the Sunzi and Laozi; Taipei: Zhongyang yanjiuyuan jidaishi yanjiusuo], 2002, 1–35). 30. Tang Junyi 唐君毅, “Zhongguo zhexuezhong ziran yuzhouguan zhi tezhi 中國哲學中自然宇宙觀之特質 [The distinctive features of natural cosmology in Chinese philosophy],” Zhongguo zhexue sixiang zhi bijiaolun wenji 中國哲學思想之 比較論文集 [Collected essays on the comparison between Chinese and Western philosophical thought] (Taipei: Xuesheng shuju, 1988), 101–103. 31. Tang, “Zhongguo zhexuezhong ziran yuzhouguan zhi tezhi,” 16. 32. Great Commentary A6. 33. Mu-chou Poo, In Search of Personal Welfare: A View of Ancient Chinese Religion (Albany: State University of New York Press, 1998), 22. 34. There is a detailed discussion of these assumptions in Kang Yunmei 康韻梅, Zhongguo gudai siwangguan zhi tanjiu 中國古代死亡觀之探究 [An exploration of the ancient Chinese view of death] (Taipei: Guoli Taiwandaxue wenshi congkan), 1990. 35. Poo, In Search of Personal Welfare, 214. 36. Robert G. Henricks, trans., Lao-tzu: Te-tao Ching (New York: Ballantine, 1989), 274, n. 162; Liu Xiaogan 劉笑敢, Laozi gujin 老子古今 [The Laozi past and present] (Beijing: Chinese Academy of Social Sciences Press, 2006), 348. 37. See Roger T. Ames, “Death as Transformation in Classical Daoism,” in Death and Philosophy, ed. Jeff Malpas and Robert C. Solomon (London: Routledge, 1998), for a discussion of death as exhilarating transformation in the Zhuangzi.

FIVE

DEATH AND DYING IN THE ANALECTS Philip J. Ivanhoe

Should we not confess that in our civilized attitude towards death we are once again living psychologically beyond our means, and should we not rather turn back and recognize the truth? —Sigmund Freud, “Thoughts for the Times on War and Death”

Human reactions to death play a prominent, diverse, and complex role in motivating, guiding, and shaping religious and philosophical thought throughout the world’s cultures. Even if we restrict this claim to straightforward cases, wherein the theme of death is explicit, its range is quite impressive. If we include cases where the influence is more indirect and subtle, the realm over which the claim holds true increases significantly. In a number of Western religious traditions, a belief in life after death has been of such singular importance that our mundane existence here on earth fades dramatically in comparative value. Such a sense of proportional dissonance may yet inform contemporary inheritors of these traditions, appearing now in the guise of various, more-secular beliefs, attitudes, and behaviors as well as in a general yearning for something more beyond the lives we live that will somehow make them all worthwhile. Many religious traditions have regarded the phenomenon of death as an aberration, a profound anomaly crying out for explanation and resolution. However, modern psychological accounts of death tend to insist that such responses to death are forms of denial; according to such views, the threat of death is so overwhelming to our individual egos that it moves us to work mightily to deceive ourselves and banish the obvious fact of death

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from consciousness.1 A desire to live on in some afterlife or to be reborn to live again may well be understood as a kind of denial of death. Many who relish “deflating” religion on this score seem unaware that the selfcentered life of eternal consumption that is so widespread in industrialized cultures is but a variation on this theme. Those who display the bumper sticker that reads “He who dies with the most toys wins” can never pause in the frenetic acquisition of toys to ask what exactly he wins or the more obvious question of who precisely wins. Indeed, smug proclamations about “not needing” religious answers, like declarations of fearlessness by religious fanatics as they joyfully sacrifice themselves “for God,” easily lend themselves to be understood as expressions of a dread of death, more howling than whistling in the dark. In those cultures that regard death as a breach of cosmic order, we often find myths about how death came into the world. Such stories usually associate the arrival of death with some particular human failing or explain it as a manifestation of an irrevocable tension, dichotomy, or flaw in the fabric of the universe itself. On such accounts, life and death are understood in some sense as shadows or echoes of good and bad. A distinctive feature of the early Confucian tradition is that it offers no account of how death originated or came into the world or, for that matter, when or how the world itself came into being. Early Confucians did not regard the nature or origin of death as a great conundrum in need of explanation.2 This is not to say they did not see death as posing profound and vexing problems to human beings; however, the nature of these problems—and the tensions they felt while seeking to understand the relationship between life and death—were conceived of differently. These thinkers were primarily concerned with understanding what place death and our reactions and responses to it play in a well-ordered, meaningful, and noble life, rather than what is the essence or origin of death and its related phenomena. With these remarks before us, let us turn to the specific case of the founder of the Confucian tradition. How did Kongzi conceive of death?3 How did he think one should react and respond to it? How, if at all, should our conception of and attitude toward death inform our lives? These are the questions I will address by exploring Kongzi’s views on death and dying as found in the text of the Analects.4 After presenting my interpretation of Kongzi’s views on death, I will question whether his position suffers from a problem identified by a number of modern Western thinkers. These thinkers, many of whom are associated with the broad category “existentialism,” argue that certain conceptions of the ideal human life amount to an evasion of the most basic fact of the human condition: our finite existence and imminent death. Such flawed conceptions manage to do this by drawing one’s attention away from the concrete facts of human life and focusing instead on the project of bringing something purportedly really meaningful into being;

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they suggest sacrificing one’s life for some abstract cause or future utopia. In so doing, they allow one to avoid the subjective reality of one’s mortal existence. Hence, they encourage a fundamentally “inauthentic” form of life. I will argue that while Kongzi’s allegiance to the Dao 道 (Way) can appear to present such an evasion, it does not; Kongzi offers a consistent, complex, realistic, and profoundly moving account of human life and death. Kongzi did not believe in any strong sense of personal survival after death.5 Even if one could show that he did hold some form of such a belief, it still was not part of a developed eschatology and played no role in shaping his views about how one should live one’s life. That is to say, if he believed in some form of post-life survival, this was not embedded in a greater web of beliefs about a final judgment, subsequent punishment and reward, or any notion of reincarnation. I find no passages in the Analects to support the idea that Kongzi believed one’s individual personality survived in any form beyond death.6 And so, I take him as having held the view that, for all practical purposes, physical death is the end of an individual’s personal consciousness. A number of thinkers have argued that death, so understood, cannot be considered bad for the person who dies.7 If one believes that death really is the complete end of personal consciousness, then it is just a mistake or a kind of lack of nerve to worry about being dead, and this holds true whether one is considering the death of another or oneself. This much seems right. If we accept this claim, though, it might appear to present problems for Kongzi. As we shall see, in several places in the Analects, Kongzi at least appears to be worried about death—when contemplating both someone’s actual death and the prospect of death in general. What I mean by “being worried about death” is showing a heightened concern about it, not dreading death but disliking it, wanting to keep it at bay, and finding it—in at least some cases—a source of sadness, regret, and even tragedy. So, the first issue I would like to explore is whether, in worrying about certain cases of death, Kongzi was making a fundamental mistake or showing a lack of nerve. Let us begin with cases of the death of another and then move on to the special case of one’s own death to see first what Kongzi found disturbing about death and second whether we can discern in these examples any legitimate reasons for such concern. Kongzi was clearly distressed at the deaths and threats of death of several people. In Analects 6.10, he bemoans the terminal illness of his disciple Bo Niu. The passage goes: “Bo Niu was ill and the master went to ask about him. Holding his hand through the window, the master said, “It is all over! Is it not simply a matter of fate? But that such a man should have such an illness! That such a man should have such an illness!”8 This is decidedly not the attitude of a Stoic. Kongzi is disturbed by the impending death of Bo Niu and distraught over the nature of his malady (which

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commentators suggest was perhaps leprosy). This passage, and others like it, starkly contrast with those in which Kongzi advocates a calm and determined acceptance of mortality. When Kongzi had to confront the death of his favorite disciple, Yan Hui, we see his distress reaching the point of openly uncontrolled grief. With the loss of Yan Hui, Kongzi wails, “EEE! Heaven has taken him from me! Heaven has taken him from me!”9 This leads his disciples to question him, in the following passage, for allowing his mourning to reach such extremes, something he explicitly warns against on other occasions.10 Kongzi responds by saying, “Have I lost control of myself? If not for this man, for whom then should I lose control?” These and other passages make clear that Kongzi thought that at least some cases of death warrant—or at least allow for—excessive displays of grief. The two cases I have explored have at least three things in common. First, they involve the death of young people. Second, these young people were morally good; they were leading lives in accordance with the Dao. Third, they died of illnesses. In light of these three factors, Kongzi’s excessive grief does not contradict what he says elsewhere about the proper attitude toward mourning, for such cases as Bo Niu’s and Yan Hui’s represent genuine tragedies. These two young men were morally fine people cut down early in life for no apparent reason and in the service of no greater cause. Their lives end tragically and are thus events that even a cultivated person finds unsettling and disturbing. It seems fair to speculate that Kongzi would not have been particularly distressed, if at all, by the deaths of Bo Niu and Yan Hui had they been bad people, young or old. In Analects 14.46, Kongzi even implies that someone who consistently refuses to engage in self-cultivation would be better off dead. We cannot understand Kongzi’s response to the deaths of Bo Niu and Yan Hui without appreciating that these were good young men who died tragically; their deaths were a severe blow to the cause of the Dao and all who support it. Kongzi thinks that we should mourn but not be excessively distressed when a good person dies at a ripe old age. As we shall see when we discuss the case of Kongzi’s own death, losing those we love, respect, and admire is always sad—and such sadness is part of even the best human life—but if those who have died have lived proper lives, that is, lives in accordance with the Dao, we should see their deaths as the final act in the greater narrative of their lives and respond with genuine, ritually appropriate mourning. In such cases, “mourning should reach to grief and then stop.”11 But when a young person dies for no higher purpose, this pattern is disrupted and the event is much more difficult to accept. The youthfulness of Bo Niu and Yan Hui is therefore significant.

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We must also keep in mind that the deaths of these fine young men lacked any special ethical significance. All good people, young and old, must be prepared to risk and even sacrifice their lives for the Way.12 And those ethical heroes, young or old, who pay the highest price in defense of the Way should be mourned with special reverence and esteem. For example, in Analects 16.12, Kongzi praises the moral exemplars Bo Yi and Shu Qi, who sacrificed themselves for the Way, and points out that their self-sacrifice bestowed upon them a kind of worldly immortality: “Duke Jing of Qi had a thousand teams of horses and yet the day he died, the people found no virtue in him to praise. Bo Yi and Shu Qi starved to death at the foot of Mount Shou Yang, yet down to the present day, the people sing their praises . . .” In light of these various observations, we can construct a general understanding of Kongzi’s view about the death of another. As will become even more clear later, his view is predicated on a conception of what makes life worth living. A good human life, one that is in accordance with the Dao, is a life well lived. Such a life requires that one be willing to sacrifice oneself in pursuit of the Way should the need arise. Implicit in such a view is the idea that an important constituent of living well is having principles, ideals, and values for which one is willing to die. People who have no such principles, ideals, and values may live longer and more-pleasurable lives, but these lives lack a special sense of dignity, commitment, and honor. If living a morally committed life leads to death, this—like every death—is a source of sadness, but it does not warrant excessive grief. For like the death of a good person who has lived out a full span of years, such a life fulfills the most important part of the true destiny of human beings (that is, the ethical part) and is in this respect proper and fitting. But a promising young person who dies as a result of some calamity such as disease or accident presents a profoundly different case: she is denied the chance to fulfill her true destiny as a human being. Such cases are true tragedies and warrant the excessive grief we see Kongzi express for Bo Niu and Yan Hui. Since Kongzi has a clear idea of what constitutes a good human life, he can explain what is bad about the death of another, distinguish different kinds of cases, and advocate a range of appropriate responses. Those who are able to live out their years following the Dao completely realize their full destiny as human beings. We mourn them at death because, given the social and relational nature of the Dao, they are part of our lives as well. When they die, we lose not only our personal relationship but also their participation in our greater communal lives. Our loss is greater or less depending on how close they were to us, that is, whether they were parents, relatives, friends, or simply fellow humans.13 Those young in age who sacrifice themselves for the Way—for example, people such as Bo Yi and Shu Qi—fulfill their ethical duty to the Way

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but are not able to fulfill all of the Way, since the proper goal in following the Way is to live out the natural allotment of human years and fulfill the various role-specific duties that life presents at its different stages. So, it is appropriate to mourn for martyrs to the Way with special reverence and respect and pay tribute to them throughout the ages. Cases in which those dedicated to the Way are cut down in youth, for no apparent reason and in pursuit of no greater cause, present true tragedies. To see a young, good person die of disease or accident is deeply tragic and disturbing and well warrants the profound distress Kongzi displays. This does not contradict his other teachings, nor does it manifest philosophical confusion or any lack of nerve. In each of the cases previously discussed, Kongzi describes a profoundly humane understanding and response to death that reflects the structure of his larger philosophical perspective on the proper form and end of human life. This larger philosophical perspective also gives Kongzi a way to answer other questions concerning death. Among the most vexing of these is, What makes death not just bad, but bad in a unique and unequivocal way? As noted previously, it cannot simply be the fact that we will not exist—for nothing can be of any consequence to those who do not exist.14 What is bad about dying is that we will lose what we now have and what we still reasonably might have. With death, the prospect is that these things—all of them—will be gone and gone for good. To understand death and what is bad about it is not to understand what the state of death itself is like, for death is not just like nothing; to be dead is to be nothing. Rather, to understand death and its significance for us is to understand what it will deprive us of. Most generally, of course, death deprives us of life and all the various things that make life worth living.15 This implies that in order to understand the significance of death we must understand, at least in general terms, the meaning of life. If we understand what life is really about, that will provide us with what we need in order to understand the significance of death. This is just what Kongzi implies in Analects 11.12. In this passage, the disciple Ji Lu asks Kongzi about how to serve ghosts and spirits. Kongzi replies, “While you are not yet able to serve human beings, how can you serve spirits?” When the disciple goes on to ask about death, Kongzi replies, “While you do not yet understand life, how can you understand death?” James Legge, in his note to this section of the Analects, claims that it is another example where “Confucius [Kongzi] avoids answering the important questions put to him.”16 But in this case, Legge simply missed the point. Kongzi does answer the question, saying that if one truly understands the significance of human life, he or she will have attained a full and satisfactory understanding of death—one will know all that there is to know about it.17 Such a perspective will provide one with an answer to the general question

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of what is bad about death (i.e., it deprives one of all those good things that we value in living), and it will help one begin to answer more specific questions such as, “What, if anything, is worth dying for?” So, without ascending into the metaphysical heavens or abandoning ourselves to the overwrought pronouncements of certain existentialist philosophers, we can see how a consciousness of death is indeed an important and an arguably necessary perspective for answering questions about the meaning of life. A sense of the general aims of human life and its normal course and culmination allows one to appreciate the value of those things in life worth seeking, working for, and defending.18 Such an appreciation of life is what gives death its particular sting.19 It tells us why and in what senses death is indeed bad. Such a consciousness of death focuses the mind in particularly sharp and revealing ways. Turning this insight around, it is not at all unreasonable to insist that an adult who has never thought deeply about the meaning of death could not possibly have a mature, full, and lively appreciation of the meaning of human life. These same ideas apply when we turn to the case of one’s own death. There are good reasons to worry about one’s mortality, just as there are good reasons to mourn the deaths of others and to do so differently in different cases. While it is true that what happens after I am dead will be meaningless to me then (for I will no longer exist), it is nevertheless true that my death will affect a number of people and states of affairs in the world, and the future fate of these people and affairs is important to me now and in whatever time I have left between now and then. This kind of concern is particularly acute in the Confucian tradition, where relational roles and their attendant duties play a large part in one’s conception of oneself and in the nature of what one values. Moreover, how I die, both the manner in which I face death and what I become in the time between now and then, are also issues of great importance to me. How I conceive of these future states can and should deeply affect and shape the life I still have left to live—what goals I seek to attain and promote and how I go about working for their realization. These ideas are evident in a remarkable passage that purports to record an occasion when Kongzi was on the verge of death.20 Analects 9.12 says: The Master was seriously ill. Zilu ordered the other disciples to act as retainers. During a period when his condition had improved, the Master said, You [Zilu] has long been practicing deception. In pretending to have retainers when I have none, whom would we be deceiving? Would we be deceiving Heaven? Moreover, would I not rather die in your arms, my friends, than in the arms of retainers? Even if I am not given an elaborate funeral, it is not as if I will be dying by the wayside.21

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In this deep and profoundly moving passage, we see several distinctive features of Kongzi’s views about death and life. In his last moments he is, as always, teaching: living out his particular role in the great Dao. The message he delivers is that the best life for human beings is one of genuine love among fellow humans. While important, the marks of social rank—in this case retainers—are only so in terms of their ability to engender a harmonious social order held together with genuine love and respect for one another. Such outward signs are not to be pursued, much less presumed, for personal glorification. Analects 9.12 presents an account of Kongzi living out his beliefs in what appear to be his last moments of life. He displays a wise understanding and courageous acceptance of his own death. A passage that is remarkably similar in structure though strikingly different in meaning and sensibility is found in the Zhuangzi. It is worth citing in full and discussing for the contrast it offers. When Zhuangzi was dying, his disciples wanted to give him a lavish funeral. Said Zhuangzi, I have Heaven and earth for my outer and inner coffins, the sun and moon for my pair of jade discs, the stars for my pearls, the myriad creatures for my farewell gifts. Is anything missing from my funeral paraphernalia? What would you add to these?” “Master! We are afraid the crows and kites will eat you!” said one of his disciples. “Above ground I’ll be eaten by the crows and kites; below ground I’ll be eaten by the ants and mole-crickets. You rob from one to give to the other. How come you like them so much better?”22 In this passage, we find a very different message. While both Kongzi and Zhuangzi sought to end their lives by taking their proper place within the universal pattern of the Dao, for Kongzi this place is in the arms of his disciples, his proper position within the human social order. For Zhuangzi, the proper place is anywhere within the broad bosom of Nature; his community is the vast, unbounded realm of the natural. This open-ended acceptance of things leaves him at home everywhere in the wide world, but he is without Kongzi’s special sense of belonging within the deep and precious relationships of human community. Zhuangzi lacks the resources to distinguish and justify the different responses to death that are characteristic of Kongzi’s position. The death of anyone at any time is equally acceptable on such a view.23 This difference represents well what is at stake in the alternative visions sketched by these early Chinese sages. The only kind of death that is improper for Zhuangzi is the one that one brings upon oneself or forces upon others by following the foolish goals of the scheming human mind. Such a death is more pitiful than it is sorrowful or tragic. Sustained, reflec-

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tive, and ritualized—that is, shared, communal—mourning finds no place in Zhuangzi’s scheme.24 Zhuangzi, too, is teaching with his last breaths, but his lesson is one of a probing skepticism. He seeks to leave his disciples with a final expression of his lifelong theme of humorous doubting by once more poking holes in their complacent certainty about what is right and wrong. He tries to move them out of their familiar frames of reference to look at things from a grander perspective, one in which human beings and their concerns assume a more-diminutive stature against the background of an expansive and comprehensive natural landscape. As always, the lesson is delivered as an amusing and open question. Zhuangzi ends his life as he has lived it, in practice, a playful skeptic. As I mentioned at the outset, a certain group of thinkers in the Western tradition have argued that many views of death represent a misguided and deforming evasion of the human condition. In a fascinating essay, Michael Slote explores a number of versions of this view, which he argues can be seen as originating with Kierkegaard. Slote explains: According to Kierkegaard, to have an objective attitude toward one’s life is to have the kind of attitude toward one’s life encouraged by an Hegelian view of the world. On such a view, one is part of a larger “world-historical” process of the self-realization of Reason or Spirit, and one’s life takes on significance if one plays a role, however minor, in that world-historical process.25 This kind of attitude, in a sense deferring one’s life in order to bring something really meaningful into being or sacrificing one’s life for some abstract cause or future utopia, is not restricted to any particular tradition or time. As Slote goes on to note, “One does not have to be an Hegelian to think in this kind of way. One can be thinking in a similar way if, as a scientist or philosopher, e.g., one devotes oneself to one’s field in the belief or hope that one’s life gains significance through one’s contribution to something ‘bigger.’ ”26 These remarks bring the problem close, for some perhaps too close, to home. Many of us, at least at times, talk in precisely this Hegelian fashion. In the case of my own profession, many find their energies and attention completely absorbed in the task of finishing that next book, article, or presentation. Much of the meaning of such a life seems to consist solely in the effort to “move the field forward.” As a result, teaching and personal life often are ignored, suffer, or are sacrificed (or worse, are valued only for the contribution they make to our research and advancement). How, though, can we allow such an ephemeral project as “moving the field forward” (whatever that odd metaphor is taken to mean) to draw us so completely out of our interpersonal obligations and relationships and

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the more-immediate tasks and challenges of life: our human subjectivity? There is something particularly perverse about teachers of the humanities allowing—and even advocating—this ongoing sacrifice to some vague project and amorphous future state of affairs. This is not a problem afflicting only academics; people in every walk of life can be heard giving voice to the same kind of attitude. My present aim is to determine whether Kongzi’s view of death, as I have described it, entails such an evasion of subjectivity. In other words, is Kongzi’s notion of the Dao like Hegel’s notion of Geist, a ghostly repository for our greatest hopes and values, something we look up to in order to avoid facing our all-too-human lives, something really grand that we hope will inflate and sustain the value of our existence? Is his call to follow the Dao a way of fleeing from our subjectivity and in particular the prospect of our own deaths? My view is that Kongzi does not display or advocate this kind of “inauthentic” or “false” consciousness. If we consider again the passage that describes him facing his own death, in his final moments, he is not looking away from his imminent demise and toward some Dao that relieves his pain and promises him peace or some greater reward. On the contrary, he is focused upon and pointing his students’ attention toward his imminent death and saying he is ready, happy to die in their arms and not alone—“by the wayside.” While Kongzi sees himself and his life in terms of greater patterns and processes, the Dao is not ideal in the way that Geist is for Hegel. Rather than describing a world-historical process, the Dao should be understood in part as a symbol for the ideal form of life that Kongzi aimed to revive and propagate and for our all-too-human struggle to realize the goods represented by the Dao here and now in our own lives.27 Through concerted and ongoing human effort, the Dao can be realized to varying degrees in the world, but there is no other place to be but here, in the world we know, with all its faults, its pains, and even its tragedies. The inevitably imperfect context of human life is part of why we need the humanizing influence of Confucian ritual: to acknowledge and seek to ameliorate the faults we encounter, relieve some of the pain, and offer one another solace and solidarity in the face of tragedy. On such a view of human life, one can understand, endorse, and sympathize with Kongzi’s excessive grief for Bo Niu and Yan Hui, for one feels a distinctive senselessness in the deaths of these fine young men. According to Kongzi, even if one finds oneself living in a severely disordered age, one’s work and attention are to be focused on the tasks at hand, not on some future utopia or reward. The Confucian Dao is precious only as it is fulfilled and realized in the course of actual human lives. This is how I understand Analects 15.29: “Human beings can fill out [i.e., fulfill] the Way. The Way cannot fill out human beings.”28 Like any path, the Way

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fulfills its function only when people actually make use of it, when they follow the challenging yet fulfilling course it lays out for human beings. One does not reach one’s destination simply by knowing where the proper road is to be found; one must walk the full length of that road. Kongzi does express a fervent hope for the future revival of a past golden age, one that will herald the return of a kind of utopia here on earth. He is willing and encourages others to make significant sacrifices to realize this grand goal. In regard to our present concerns, much depends on how we understand such exhortations. Even if we grant that on occasion he asks too much of us, it is still clearly the case that this greater project can only be won by working to develop our individual characters in the daily course of our lives and that the realization of this ideal society, however worthy of sacrifice, is not the sole source of value in our lives.29 Quite to the contrary, Kongzi wants us to keep our attention focused always on the challenges and the joys that lie before us; cultivating a heightened awareness of the extraordinary potential of the ordinary is an important, though often neglected, feature of Kongzi’s philosophy and of Confucian thought in general. This concern for the everyday wonder and delight to be found in a well-lived life is evident throughout the text. For example, when, in Analects 11.24, Kongzi asks various disciples to express their greatest aspiration, the one he approves of most is Dian, who suggests, “In the waning days of spring, wearing the new clothes of the season, with five or six young men and six or seven boys, to bathe in the River Yi, dry ourselves in the gentle breezes to be found at the Altar of Rain and then, together, to return home chanting.” Kongzi’s joyful appreciation of such simple pleasures is a critical aspect of his larger philosophical view. While he hopes and works for a brighter future, this never leads him to lose sight of the everyday, for the only way to the former goal is through an ongoing effort to improve and complete the latter. This ability to comprehend and balance opposing tensions and concerns, to understand the extremes and yet hold to the mean, is part of the subtle power of his vision. And so, we should not be at all surprised to find that Kongzi’s understanding of human life includes a realistic and humane understanding of its inevitable conclusion in death.

NOTES An earlier, shorter version of this essay appeared with the same title in Tu Weiming and Mary Evelyn Tucker, eds., Confucian Spirituality (New York: Crossroad Publishing Company, 2003), 1:220–232. Thanks to Erin M. Cline, Amy L. Olberding, and Michael Slater for helpful suggestions on earlier drafts of this essay. 1. In addition to Freud’s, one of the most eloquent and compelling arguments to this effect is offered by Ernest Becker; see The Denial of Death (New York: Free Press Paperback, 1973).

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2. By “early” Confucians I mean those who lived prior to the unification of China under the Qin dynasty in 221 B.C.E. 3. I employ the romanization “Kongzi” 孔子, literally “Master Kong,” rather than the latinized name “Confucius” for the founder of the Confucian tradition. 4. Excellent, though at times imaginatively exuberant, work has been done on the text of the Lunyu 論語 (Analects) in terms of arguing for different strata, their different dates, and possible origins. See, in particular, the work of Bruce E. and Taeko A. Brooks, The Original Analects, rev. 2nd ed. (New York: Columbia University Press, 2001). However, I am interested in Kongzi as a character in the received text of the Analects and in the views attributed to him. I believe the passages that concern death and dying hang together in a consistent manner and offer an enlightening perspective on the nature and meaning of both life and death; that is enough to treat them, as they have been treated throughout the Confucian tradition, as parts of a single, unified work. 5. A number of scholars have said and continue to say that Kongzi is an agnostic about spiritual beings, citing Analects 6.22 in support, but when Kongzi encourages us to “respect ghosts and spirits but keep them at a distance,” he seems to be expressing a belief in their existence along with an admonition that they should not be one’s primary concern. If one does not believe in ghosts and spirits, what would be the point of respecting them or keeping them at a distance? The critical issue for my purposes, though, is not whether he believed in the existence of ghosts and spirits but what exactly his belief in such beings entailed. My position is that it did not entail any strong sense of personal survival. 6. Kongzi does seem to allow that “spirits” do survive, but their identities are not personal and appear to be role-specific. Scholarly consensus indicates that the early Chinese believed that the spirits of different classes of people survived different lengths of time but that all gradually lost their individual personalities and eventually faded away. For a good discussion of this topic, see Yü Ying-shih, “ ‘O Soul, Come Back!’ A Study in the Changing Conceptions of the Soul and Afterlife in Pre-Buddhist China,” Harvard Journal of Asiatic Studies 47.2 (1987): 363–395. 7. Classical examples are thinkers such as Epicurus in his Letter to Menoeceus and Stoics such as Seneca, Epictetus, and Marcus Aurelius. Among modern thinkers, Spinoza is famous for claiming, “A free man thinks of nothing less than of death, and his wisdom is not a meditation upon death but upon life” (Ethics, Prop. LXVII). One might argue though that even the most thorough meditation on “life” that ignores the fact of human mortality is inadequate. 8. All translations of Chinese material are my own. 9. See Analects 11.9. These lines might be—and indeed have been—read as saying, “Heaven is destroying me! Heaven is destroying me!” 10. His remarks about Yan Hui seem to go against claims such as “I do not complain against Heaven nor do I blame men” (Analects 14.35). They also apparently contradict his teaching that “mourning should reach to grief and then stop” (Analects 19.14). It is interesting that Kongzi’s state of mind is described as tong 慟 (moved or upset with grief), which graphically, phonetically, and semantically is a close relative of dong 動 (moved or unsettled). Of course, Mengzi is renowned for achieving and promoting the attainment of a bu dong xin 不動心 (an unmovable heart-mind). What, though, he meant by this is perhaps less clear than some assume.

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11. See Analects 19.14. 12. See Analects 8.13. However, Kongzi does not admire recklessness; see, for example, Analects 7.1. The Way has such importance for Kongzi that in Analects 4.8 we find him declaring, “If in the morning I heard that the Way was being followed, I could die that evening contented.” 13. Kongzi distinguished different responses to and duties regarding the death of another depending on the closeness of one’s relationship to the deceased. The most elaborate duties were, of course, for one’s parents. These included the prescribed three-year period of mourning (Analects 1.11, 4.20, 17.19, etc.) However, he also discussed the duty one has to bury a friend whose relatives do not provide for him (Analects 10.14) and a general imperative to show respect for anyone in mourning (Analects 10.15). In other works, Kongzi is quoted as insisting that one has a related duty to animals that have served one’s family. See, for example, his discussion of one’s duty to bury a family dog or horse in the Book of Rites. For a translation, see James Legge, trans., The Li Chi: Book of Rites (reprint, New York: University Books, 1967), 1:196–197. 14. Lucretius argued that it is irrational to fear death because this would present an asymmetry between our reactions to our nonexistence before birth and after death, but Thomas Nagel points out that this argument is not quite right. The time after one’s death is time of which death deprives one. See his essay “Death” in Thomas Nagel, Mortal Questions (Cambridge University Press, 1979), 7–8. 15. I have argued that “life” in this sense is significantly different from the bare notion of existence. See “Filial Piety as a Virtue,” in Working Virtue: Virtue Ethics and Contemporary Moral Problems, ed. Rebecca Walker and Philip J. Ivanhoe (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2007), 301. 16. See James Legge, trans., Confucian Analects, in The Chinese Classics (reprint, Hong Kong: Hong Kong University Press, 1970), 1:241, n. 11. 17. This is precisely how Cheng Yi 程頤 (1033–1107) interpreted the passage. He comments, “When you understand the Way of life, you will understand the Way of death. When you have completely fulfilled your service to human beings, you will have completely fulfilled your service to the spirits” (quoted by Zhu Xi 朱熹 [1130–1200] in his Sishu jizhu 四書集注心, SSBY 6.3a). 18. Bernard Williams argues that we need a conception of the bounded nature of our existence in order to find any significance in life. Immortality is a recipe for tedium and meaninglessness. See “The Makropulos Case: Reflections on the Tedium of Immortality,” in Language, Metaphysics, and Death, ed. John Dollelly (New York: Fordham University Press, 1978), 228–242. 19. Aristotle makes a related claim in the course of his discussion of courage, arguing that it is more difficult for the person of practical wisdom, who understands and appreciates all that a good life offers, to risk or sacrifice his life. Only the phronimous feels the full measure of what such sacrifice entails. See NE 1117b10. 20. Compare this passage with Analects 8.4, where the disciple Zengzi is seriously ill and is led to comment, “When a bird is about to die, its song is mournful. When a man is about to die, his words are good.” 21. Compare this and the passage in the following from the Zhuangzi with Analects 11.11, where Kongzi scolds his disciples for giving Yan Hui a lavish funeral and blames himself for having failed his favorite disciple. Here and throughout the

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text of the Analects, we find a remarkably consistent view on various aspects of death and dying. 22. The passage is from chapter 32, “Lie Yukou,” of the Zhuangzi. For an alternative translation, see Burton Watson, trans., The Complete Works of Zhuangzi (New York: Columbia University Press, 1968), 361. 23. This view is not consistently maintained across the various sections and strata of the Zhuangzi. The examples of the deaths of different friends and Mengsun Cai’s mother, found in chapter 6, “The Great and Venerable Teacher”—one of the “Inner Chapters”—represent the view I regard as most consistent with Zhuangzi’s general philosophy (see Watson, Complete Works, 83–89). This view, though, seems inconsistent with Zhuangzi’s reaction to passing the grave of his friend Huizi (see Watson, Complete Works, 269). It also seems to be in considerable tension with Zhuangzi’s complex reaction to the death of his wife (See Watson, Complete Works, 191–192). 24. The lack of this type of mourning is brought home in a number of places in the text of the Zhuangzi, but perhaps nowhere is it clearer than in the stories from chapter 6 and the story of the death of Zhuangzi’s wife. See the reference in the previous note. 25. See Michael Slote, “Existentialism and the Fear of Dying,” in Language, Metaphysics, and Death, 69–87. 26. Slote, “Existentialism and the Fear of Dying,” 70. 27. As a symbol, the Dao possesses value above and beyond the various goods it directly promotes. It gives us a guiding and inspiring metaphor by means of which we can organize and carry out our lives. Robert Adams puts this well: “Symbolically I can be for the Good as such, and not just for the bits and pieces of it that I can concretely promote or embody” (“Symbolic Value,” in Peter A. French, Theodore E. Uehling, Jr., and Howard K. Wettstein, eds., The Philosophy of Religion, Midwest Studies in Philosophy 21 (Notre Dame, Ind.: University of Notre Dame Press, 1998), 1–15, esp. 12. 28. For helpful comments on the meaning of this line and particularly the character hong 弘 (fill out or extend), see Bryan W. Van Norden, “Method in the Madness of the Laozi,” in Religious and Philosophical Aspects of the Laozi, ed. Mark Csikszentmihalyi and Philip J. Ivanhoe (Albany: State University of New York Press 1999), 207, n. 25. 29. In Analects 14.38, Kongzi is described as one who “knows it is no use yet keeps on trying.” This leads to interesting questions concerning the degree to which he is committed to pursuing a lost cause and how much of what is valuable is found in such pursuits. But “lost causes” need not absorb all of life’s values; like the sense of symbols discussed previously, they can serve as ideals around which deeply meaningful yet in many respects quite normal human lives are organized. Josiah Royce argues that most religions represent such “lost causes,” and his description offers profound insights into how such ideals can function in a human life: One begins, when one serves the lost cause, to discover that, in some sense, one ought to devote one’s highest loyalty to causes that are too good to be visibly realized at any one moment of this poor wretched fleeting time

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world. . . . Loyalty seeks, therefore, something essentially superhuman. . . . In its highest reaches it always is, therefore, the service of a cause that was just now lost and lost because the mere now is too poor a vehicle for the presentation of that ideal unity of life of which every form of loyalty is in quest. (Josiah Royce, The Philosophy of Loyalty [New York: Macmillan, 1908], 284–285.

SIX

I KNOW NOT “SEEMS” Grief for Parents in the Analects Amy Olberding

Today, in the contemporary western world at least, the death of a child is counted a special sorrow. The parent who loses a child is judged to have been dealt a blow of greater force than that produced by other species of loss. We imagine the grief of the bereft parent to be sorrow at its most severe, and mourning to be correspondingly prolonged. This assessment, however, must be understood in the context of the historical and sociological conditions from which it issues. We rue the deaths of children as particularly grief-worthy in a context in which infant and childhood mortality rates are their lowest levels in history and birth rates are declining. Children are rarer in our experience, the deaths of children rarer still. Medical technology makes death appear more negotiable in general, and the trust this inspires is perhaps most acute when the ill also have the resilience of youth in their favor. We thus can expect our children’s survival with a confidence our forebears never could. Where we find that trust violated and our confidence misplaced, our grief is increased by shock and dismay. Such responses are additionally magnified by what the child represents to us, the values she embodies. She is innocence and vulnerability, as well as the promise of a future. The material and technological advantages of contemporary life promote a sense of both power and possibility, a forwardlooking optimism that finds its most poignant limit in the loss of the child. Indeed, the death of a child sometimes operates as a trope for the death of innocence itself, and our perceived failure to protect the child reads as

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a profound statement of impotence, an inability to shape the hopeful and open world we prize. In Kongzi’s China, it was not the death of the child but the death of the parent that was marked out for intense sorrow and prolonged mourning.1 To understand the conditions that give rise to this priority, we can begin by observing that the material realities of the time operate against our own popular sentiments. Infant and child mortality rates were such that the majority of those born did not attain adulthood, and this fact alone works against the optimism we invest in our children. In short, life was far more tenuous and death far more familiar. Cultural self-understanding and aspiration are framed accordingly. Where life is more fragile, elders represent persistence and continuity. They embody the ability to carry forward the sustaining traditions and social memory that promote order. The symbolic role of parents is, moreover, particularly acute given the social and political realities of Kongzi’s age, a time in which longstanding values regarding kinship ties and ancestral authority were challenged by increasing political chaos. Insofar as parents represent an authoritative connection to a more ordered age, their deaths render the survivors both bereft of this connection and burdened by a need to assume their own authority in relation to the past. The bereft must, that is, not only relinquish those who guided them, but also become guides for others. To lose a parent is to be cut loose from that which most-immediately moors the individual to the vital and legitimating authority of the past and its sustaining structures; such is a source of potent sorrow. Of course, while there is much more that might be said about these cultural priorities and how societies assign precedence to particular species of loss, here we need only note the general fact that identifying historical and sociological circumstances has considerable explanatory power in assaying cultural concerns regarding bereavement. Undeniably, cultures frame mortality according to underlying value commitments.2 Such commitments are certainly diverse, but they generally issue from a culture’s assessment of what renders life meaningful and correlated perceptions about risks to achieving the best sort of life. Broad values about such matters are in turn informed by the social and material conditions of a time and place, by what sorts of flourishing and achievement seem possible and appealing given the world as we find it and can shape it. In short, although death is universal, how death features in an understanding of the human condition confesses its origin in the local and particular. To paraphrase Derrida, while all people die, they do not die alike.3 Nor, of course, do they grieve alike. Caution is therefore warranted where we seek to address attitudes toward mortality framed in a context culturally and temporally distant from our own. Our target may not speak to the “death” and its sorrows we find familiar, and, while such differences are often instructive, we must nonetheless take care not to elide them by reflexively importing our own assumptions.

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Kongzi is reported to have claimed that “even those who have yet to give of themselves utterly are sure to do so in the mourning of their parents.”4 In this, Kongzi implicitly assigns grief for parents an ethical status unparalleled by other experiences and indeed singles it out as a uniquely potent test of the mourner’s endurance and virtue. This claim, we are obliged to acknowledge, issues from the cultural sensibilities limned previously. In his own time and place, Kongzi is not unusual in observing the special sorrows attaching to the deaths of parents. Indeed, I think we must grant that where the mourning of parents is concerned, Kongzi often “transmits” rather than “innovates.”5 He endorses what many of his age would have found intuitively correct, rehearsing familiar and well-established Chinese traditions. Because of this, we may suspect that in identifying the deaths of parents as most grief-worthy and challenging, Kongzi merely avers a culturally contingent norm for which little argument can be made. We can, that is, explain the cultural commitments and material realities that inform Kongzi’s claim, but in the absence of these or some relevantly similar conditions, there is no argument to which we might appeal for such a preference. In short, Kongzi’s assignment of priority to mourning parents may seem but a cultural artifact, the result of unexamined assumptions that bespeak Kongzi’s cultural identity rather than a developed philosophical position. I wish to resist such a reading. While we must maintain a certain sensitivity to Kongzi’s idiom, at least some of what he offers is rooted in wider normative claims about flourishing that not only permit but indeed warrant philosophical consideration. Moreover, while Kongzi broadly endorses practices common in his age and culture, he provides a novel justification and logic for these practices. That is, he urges his audience to do what they are already inclined to do, but he does so under new and philosophically enlivened terms. Finally, there is in Kongzi’s counsel a sensibility that may promise therapeutic benefit even to those who do not share his context and cultural commitments. There is in the Western philosophical corpus a dearth of consolations aimed at addressing the loss of parents,6 yet it is far from clear that we have no need of such efforts. At least some of us do find such losses difficult to navigate and recognize that they present challenges particular to the relation that obtains between parent and child. In short, I believe there is something of philosophical worth to be found here; while we may not follow Kongzi in identifying the loss of parents as categorically the worst of grief, we may yet find insight that is importantly therapeutic and that answers to needs we share with those in his more immediate audience. Before addressing these insights, it is necessary to preface the discussion of Kongzi’s counsel with a distinction implicit throughout, the difference between grief and mourning. Although we sometimes informally use “grieving” and “mourning” interchangeably, for Kongzi (and indeed in

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our own more-precise use of the language), these terms denote significantly distinct activities. Grief (ai 哀) refers to the emotive responses associated with bereavement, the immediate and often apparently involuntary sorrow occasioned by loss. Mourning (sang 喪), in contrast, refers to the organized ritual activities socially sanctioned as the proper and public forms in which sorrow is expressed. While many of Kongzi’s most explicit claims regarding the deaths of parents concern mourning—that is, the appropriate ritual behavior which should follow loss—these instructions are premised on mourning’s being motivated by sincere and indeed severe grief, for genuine sorrow is what vouchsafes the social practices of mourning as ethically meaningful. Mourning gives form to the troubling emotions of loss, but these emotions must be understood to have priority.7 Thus, while Kongzi speaks far more often about mourning, I shall principally address what I judge to be more foundational, and indeed more philosophically novel: the capacity to grieve for our parents.

GRIEF AND CONTEXT The capacity to grieve the deaths of parents is not, for Kongzi, reducible to a natural and inevitable impulse. While Kongzi and many of his contemporaries do assume that the human creature is equipped with something like a natural and untutored affection for family, Kongzi intimates that the most ethically robust grief is a product of self-cultivation. It does not simply issue spontaneously upon the loss of an object of affection but instead reflects a self-conscious and intelligent process of personal development. In short, Kongzi does not merely observe that people incline toward grieving their parents; he claims that we ought do so, that the capacity to experience this species of sorrow should be cultivated and encouraged. Whatever raw impulses to sorrow we may feel should be refined and rendered virtuous by careful reflection about the significance of loss in the context of life-governing values. Grief should reflect not simply brute feeling but considered judgment. The puzzle that Kongzi’s emphasis on grieving parents immediately presents to us, however, is just how to understand this species of sorrow with reference to judgment. That is, insofar as the most ethically worthy grief is informed and refined by understanding, we may well suspect that grief for parents is among the least susceptible to this sort of treatment, that understanding will draw us away from sorrow. For where we seek reasons for grief, many of our widely acknowledged or common promptings to grief appear generally unavailable here. Indeed, sorrow at the loss of one’s parents is, in certain respects, grief at its least rational.8 Perhaps one of the more commonplace inducements to grief consists in shock. We conduct our lives with a tacit assumption that today will resemble yesterday, that the companions we enjoy today we will enjoy tomorrow.

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Death ruptures this pattern and unseats the complacency with which we typically operate. Consequently, loss registers as a profound shock, violating expectations that subtly inform and structure our experience. However, while many species of grief find their origins in shock, grief for the deaths of parents resists this model. While there is of course no fixed order for death, the more probable a loss, and the more a death may be rationally anticipated, the less recourse we have to the complacency necessary for surprise and shock. It is perhaps always unwise to assume the continued companionship of loved ones, but this is particularly so in the case of one’s parents. Rudimentary induction schools children to expect the deaths of their parents. Indeed, it is the alternative that is improbable and thus more plausibly shocking. It is of course possible to achieve some measure of complacency despite what reason dictates. We may, as an intellectual matter, acknowledge the mortality of our companions—granting the truth that all people die—but fail to appreciate the import of our understanding in the particular case that my parents will die. Worse, we may against all reason adopt a deep denial of mortality, refusing to acknowledge that which we find painful and anxiety provoking. The shock of loss in such circumstances is increased by the forced recognition of truths long rebuffed. Grief that arises in this way, however, is clearly not the product of understanding and judgment but instead of the refusal of both. It emerges in spite of reason and consequently fits ill with the cultivation Kongzi recommends. Indeed, Kongzi explicitly warns against such a posture, claiming that children ought to assiduously maintain awareness of their parents’ age (Analects 4.21). Joy in parents’ longevity, he suggests, should be matched by trepidation, for with increasing age comes a nearness to death. Where we give place to judgment in grief and train our responses to accord with understanding, as Kongzi does, we cannot be shocked and can only receive the deaths of parents as an event for which reason prepares us, an anticipated and predictable feature in the life of any child. Shock is not the only reason we grieve, and an anticipated death may yet awaken profound distress and sorrow. We may well dread that which we expect, for grief engages not only our expectations but also our values. Sorrow requires the perception that we have lost something of value, that the death that produces our loss is a disvalue. Grief here registers as a response to that which, predictably or not, violates our desire to retain relations that contribute to and sustain our well-being. As such, it manifests as protest, as emotive resistance to accepting the disvalue of losing the companions we prize. However, where we seek to gauge our responses in accord with considered judgment, we must allow that our own preferences work against easy grief for the death of parents. That parents die before their children is not only probable, it is what we typically consider the desirable order of things. A

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Zen story well illustrates the common sensibility. Asked to confer a blessing on a family, a Zen master simply offered, “Father dies; son dies; grandson dies.”9 When queried about the perceived oddity of such a “blessing,” the Zen master simply wondered whether his interlocutor would prefer any other order of events. Where we grant that we all must die, we must allow that parents’ predeceasing their offspring is as we would wish. Indeed, as the Zen master suggests, if we think carefully about mortality, we must count such a course of events to be a stroke of fine good luck. We may perhaps find it easier to acknowledge such good fortune in the case of our own children—I want my child to suffer my death, for the alternative is that I will suffer hers—but reason obliges us to extend this understanding to the deaths of our parents. Where I grant the desire to die before one’s children as a rational and indeed virtuous preference, I am obliged to grant its implications where my own parents are concerned, and I cannot rightly dread for myself the same circumstances that I profoundly wish for my own child. Something like this sensibility features in the Analects in a poignant exchange between Kongzi and his beloved and brilliant student Yan Hui, a student he elsewhere likens to a son (11.11). When Kongzi and his students are imperiled and fleeing the state of Kuang, Yan Hui falls behind and Kongzi believes him dead. When they are reunited, Kongzi tells the young man, “I had given you up for dead.” Yan Hui replies, “While you are still living, how could I dare to die?” (11.23). As Yan Hui’s response suggests, there is not only a presumption that the student will outlive the master; there is also a deeply held and shared preference for such a course of events. To locate disvalue in and consequently grieve the death of a parent, or teacher, fits ill with this desire. Yan Hui’s response, although perhaps delivered with some humor, is nonetheless remarkable. He offers, in essence, the wish that Kongzi should die first and implies that Kongzi would be affronted to have it otherwise: Yan Hui would not “dare” (gan 敢) to die.10 The burden of the student, or child, to care well for his own safety is suggestively cast as a strategy to permit the elder to die first. Yan Hui, Kongzi’s most perceptive student, seems to grant here that our reflective preferences dictate not only the easy desire to predecease our children but also the more difficult desire to have our elders die first. While it may risk bad faith to protest the deaths of my parents through grief while simultaneously longing to die before my own child, there is an even greater peril in granting easy assent to the view that the death of a parent is a disvalue. The deaths of parents are among the “tamest” sorts of loss;11 where we wish to govern our responses to loss with good judgment, it is here that death seems most governable. Neither untimely nor tragic, the deaths of parents render reassurances that might in other contexts register as empty bromides apt and reasonable. The parent who dies has “lived a full life”; she has enjoyed her season and “her time has come.” In short,

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the death of a parent appears to be a good death. Where I locate disvalue in such a death, I risk tacitly sanctioning wider attitudes toward mortality that may be destructive of my flourishing. Locating disvalue in a good death may easily tip into the judgment that all death is disvalue, that the mortal condition itself is objectionable, tragic, and worthy of our tears. Such is to deny that there is such a thing as a “good” death. One death may be less bad than another, but such differences matter little where the most basic and intractable fact about the human creature—her mortality—is itself tragic. With such a view consolation can never be complete, for it stands on a foundation of irredeemable despair. There are of course many arguments available to contest the tragic view of our mortality. Rather than rehearsing them here, it is perhaps sufficient to observe that Kongzi does not endorse grief as a wider protest against mortality itself. As Philip J. Ivanhoe argues in the previous chapter, Kongzi clearly does recognize some deaths as tragic.12 However, Kongzi’s judgments on this score appear confined to quite particular circumstances and do not reach to the sort of more global protest against mortality necessary to locate tragedy in any or every death. Nowhere do we find Kongzi lamenting the fact of mortality or expressing dismay at mortality itself. Notably, even when Kongzi is himself bereaved and displays a vigorous sorrow, even in the midst of considerable personal distress, his sorrow in the particular case does not reach to the wider complaint that mortality itself is an affront to value or an intractable impediment to well-being.13 Indeed, I believe he would adamantly reject such a posture, seeing the despair it engenders as a corrosive and potentially paralyzing inability to receive the joys that a life well lived can afford. There is much, and much that Kongzi himself seems to acknowledge, that appears to work against considered grief for parents. The principal challenge in understanding Kongzi’s injunction that we ought to deliberately cultivate a capacity to grieve our parents thus resides in locating the sorts of judgments he believes should properly inform our sorrow. These judgments must ground sorrow for deaths acknowledged to be good and timely. They must reflect more than inchoate impulse yet less than full-blown protest against death. In short, in order to be viable as a philosophically robust and effective therapeutic approach to loss, Kongzi’s prescriptions must answer to the suspicion that these deaths should be the easiest to bear and must alleviate the worry that energetically grieving these deaths will render us vulnerable to a crippling despondency. We can begin to assay what Kongzi offers by drawing back from these individual objections against grieving parents and observing more generally how they function. Much of the reasoning that operates against grieving for parents relies on contextualizing the loss of parents within wider perspectives on mortality. We consider the loss of parents both in relation to other

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species of loss and in relation to the phenomenon of death more generally. In the case of the former, we estimate the sense of injury attaching to these losses relative to others and find them comparably mild. In the case of the latter, we recognize that if our grief attaches to these “good” deaths, there is no death we cannot grieve. In both, understanding obliges us to conceive of this death as part of larger patterns, and our apprehension of these patterns mitigates sorrow. We recoil from overstating our loss relative to other, more awful possibilities. We shrink from sanctioning the despondency implicit in the claim that all death is misfortune. The consolation afforded here is granted by way of “overflight,”14 by the ability to see our particular loss on a global map of mortality and thereby reduce or even eliminate our pain. Rather than narrowly attending to the circumstance that awakens grief, we survey mortality more generally. Death, our reasoning obliges us to grant, is everywhere, and everywhere necessary. Indeed, we may even find that by its offices we receive much joy, the transience of experience affording us pleasures that stasis and permanence cannot.15 Such is to put into perspective our pain: think broadly about death, and this death, this good death, loses its sting. Kongzi’s prescriptions, I believe, owe to the fact that he is simply not thinking about death. Kongzi does require that we contextualize the loss of parents within broader patterns, that we perform an “overflight” of sorts. He does, in other words, demand that grief accord with a reasoned response to wider patterns that structure our experience. However, the patterns he discerns as most relevant and important are those that map the field of human relationships. For Kongzi, loss is not the principal source of grief here—loss of one’s parents is. At issue, then, is not what we make of this death in the wider field of mortality, but what we make of this relationship, now lost to us, in the field of our relationships. Kongzi would not, I suspect, contest the claim that thinking widely about death will mitigate the pain of a particular loss. He would not, that is, imagine that such a strategy could not work to alleviate pain and restore equanimity. What he would contest is that such should be our priority, for where we lose the pain of grief, we lose something of greater value than our equanimity. The ethical potency of grief resides, for Kongzi, in the willingness to lead a life that courts certain species of pain in order to achieve higher order values, and these values reside in our relations with others. Thus, to understand Kongzi’s counsel regarding the loss of parents, we must in some measure turn away from death and inquire into the special ethical contours he assigns to the parent-child relationship.

PARENT AND CHILD To capture the parent-child relationship that gives rise to the cultivated grief Kongzi recommends requires that we look beyond the loss to which such

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grief is a response. While grief is proximately involuntary, Kongzi traces the capacity for grief to the self-conscious endorsement of wider life-governing values. That is, my manner of life and patterns of value school my emotions, and, although grief may immediately register as a spontaneous and unpremeditated response, it originates in antecedent values and commitments that I have sanctioned. Thus, Kongzi must be understood to recommend a manner of conceiving my relation to my parents that conditions me for grief when they die. I am enjoined to lead a life that promotes grief. When Kongzi urges that we grieve for our parents, he does not enjoin us to summon sorrow at the moment of loss, but to achieve a pattern of relation throughout our lives with our parents that will prompt grief when that moment arrives. Grief operates as a “tell,” a testament to a long reach of years and affections. Consequently, the first step in establishing the case for grief is assessing the broader pattern of the relation in which it originates. Kongzi’s understanding of the parent-child relationship is shaped by the lineage and kinship ties that organize his society. In early China and in Kongzi’s own political thought, the family is foundational to social order, and the child’s relation to elders, and parents in particular, are held to have significant implications for the harmony and order of wider society.16 Mourning for the deaths of parents is but one of many obligations that, when fulfilled, contribute to the harmonious functioning of wider society. Thinking about the parent-child relationship thus appears to draw us back to the cultural dimensions of Kongzi’s counsel. However, while widely held early Chinese views about the social implications of family structure naturally play some role in what Kongzi offers, I wish to focus exclusively on aspects of his counsel that better promise broad application and contemporary appropriation. Such an approach may invite the charge that I neglect key features of Kongzi’s reasoning, but I am principally concerned with what motivates the grief Kongzi recommends. While it is true that children who are generally filial and who grieve their parents can, in Kongzi’s idiom, be understood to contribute thereby to familial and social order, these products of grief are not its proper motivation. That is, the sincere grief Kongzi recommends fits ill with a motivational structure that relies on sorrow’s social utility. Likewise, while a flourishing relation with one’s parents, the foundation of grief, has a high social value, such is a thin motivation for aiming at such a relation. As good and worthy as it may be to profit one’s society, sorrow and the affection from which it arises are difficult to command for such a purpose. Thus while there are potent political and social reasons for promoting grief for parents and while these may contribute to an atmosphere that in some measure fosters grief, I shall leave these aside.17 It is also perhaps important to observe at the outset that Kongzi’s descriptions of the parent-child relation are largely aspirational, highlighting the exemplary and virtuous rather than attending to the sorts of obstacles

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and failures that might impede affection and flourishing. Consequently, the fascination of our own society with assessing the ways in which families go wrong can find little purchase here. Kongzi would, I suspect, eagerly condemn poor parenting and understand the failures of affection that the children of vicious parents experience.18 However, such is not his focus, nor would he be likely to draw the line between virtuous and vicious parenting where our popular psychologies do. Indeed, he would likely be deeply suspicious of the contemporary tendency of children to critique the quality of parenting they receive and worry that it is too often a mechanism for self-indulgent escape from introspection regarding one’s own shortcomings.19 Consequently, Kongzi may not attend to what we have come to consider as the extraordinary complexity of parent-child relations, particularly as these manifest in problems between parent and child. However, insofar as our concerns with such matters issue from desires to improve the quality of our relations, Kongzi’s aspirational model offers much that aims at answering this longing. Perhaps the principal feature of the flourishing parent-child relationship as Kongzi understands it is a deep sense of indebtedness. The child apprehends the parent as one to whom much is owed, and this generates a profound affection.20 We can begin to assay the indebtedness of the child to her parent by considering the early work of the parent in ushering offspring through infancy and childhood. It was commonplace in Kongzi’s age to regard the three years of mourning owed to parents as providing a temporal parallel to the difficult first three years of rearing a child.21 These are the years in which the child is at her most vulnerable and the work of the parent its most arduous and, in some ways, unrewarding. The sensibility at work here is well captured in a recent piece of satire, a “news” item headlined “Area Baby Doesn’t Have Any Friends.”22 In the accompanying article, it is observed that the baby in question offers little by way of companionship to others and often fails at basic decorum, responding to the conversation and social overtures of others with indifference or, worse, rude noises and foul odors. The baby, it avers, simply refuses to demonstrate concern for, interest in, or sympathy with others. Consequently, few find its company rewarding. The observations of the article find their humor in truths our more typical sentimental portraits of babies preclude: babies possess no capacity to earn the affection and care of others. They must rely on the generosity of others. Their fragility entails a superabundance of need, and their immaturity entails a complete inability to reciprocate. Those who care for them must therefore find resources of energy and care without any immediate expectation that their efforts will be answered with comparable effort, appreciation, or gratitude. Because of this, the child incurs a debt, an obligation to acknowledge the demanding work of her parents’ care and meet it with a suitable answering affection later in life. Her parents were her “friends” before she could make friends.23

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It may be objected that ascribing any strong sense of debt to the recipients of such care simply misunderstands the moral contours of parents and children. While the early Confucians never entertained doubts about children’s indebtedness to their parents, inheritors of deontological traditions may well suspect that to the extent that infants and small children receive “unearned” care, it is a species of care to which they are entitled. Such an entitlement may be construed as issuing from the child’s status as a human being, her humanity obliging others in the community, her parents in particular, to care for her. More specifically, the parent who produces offspring may be understood to have thereby undertaken a duty, and the fulfillment of this duty is not conditional upon receiving answering measures of care or affection. While such claims may have some purchase for thinking about parenthood and its attendant special moral responsibilities, it is less clear that such reasoning can afford moral insight of value to children. Such claims are, from the vantage of a child, variations on the “I did not ask to be born” defense frequently associated with surly teenagers and are unlikely to provide any direction for a fruitful way forward. That is, even if we grant that parents are morally obliged to provide care and thus cannot, strictly speaking, lay claim to any particular response from their offspring, the power of this truth from the child’s perspective is limited. Its efficacy at directing the child to ethically fruitful actions and attitudes is quite low.24 In short, where our aim is to secure flourishing and sustaining relations with parents, this line of reasoning simply misses the target. Of course, the debt to parents does not simply reside in the material care of the first few years of life. Kongzi’s model of the person and of personal identity is deeply social. He understands the person to be substantially constituted through relationships with others, her personal identity framed in accord with the rich variety of roles she undertakes throughout her life. On this model, personal identity is an achievement of processes that embed an individual in a nexus of care and companionship with others. Who I am confesses its origins in who I am with and to others: a daughter, a friend, a neighbor. Although there are many studies rehearsing the general dimensions of Kongzi’s understanding of personal identity, I shall focus on the singular role that parents assume in his account. Where we understand the human being to be constituted by her relations, we are obliged to grant that we emerge into the world with only the most tenuous and in some respects trivial humanity. We “have no friends” or other relations that reflect the deliberate and effortful cultivation of companionship. Those relations we do possess are familial, but until such time as we become capable participants in them, these relations are largely formal: an infant may be cast by birth into the roles of daughter, sister, and granddaughter but has yet to inhabit these roles in any meaningful sense. Becoming an able companion to others is a skill that must be acquired and

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cultivated. In this context, parents not only offer unearned affection and care but importantly school the child in how to earn such responses from others. The child’s relation with her parents is the inaugural relation in her development as a human being. Through it, she acquires her first intimations of what it means to be a human being, discovering in the models of her parents the patterns of interaction and trust that will inform and structure her wider relations with her world. She comes to understand something of what it means to fulfill a socially and communally defined role, what it means to be a child to one’s parents, and what it means to fulfill such a role in accord with the specific needs and features of particular persons, that is, what it means to be the child of these parents. She thus begins to acquire an identity built on a budding skill in navigating the general demands of human interaction and answering to the specific needs of others. In this way, the parent initiates the child into membership in the community, providing a foundation upon which other relations are constructed. The parents’ efforts at nurturing the child’s ability to assume her own humanity within relations with others does not simply reside in encouraging the development of interpersonal skills but in the perhaps less direct promotion of fruitful attitudes and dispositions in the child. In shaping these, the parent is, in some measure, the maker of the child’s world. Because the experience of the young child is organized around the home, what she finds there shapes her expectations of what she will find elsewhere and, consequently, can influence what she finds there. The principle in operation here is that like will generate like, or what William James calls “precursive faith.”25 The attitudes and dispositions I bring to my encounters with others have the power to summon and shape kindred responses. Where I encounter others with an assumption of trust, generosity, and fellow feeling, they are more likely to respond in accord with these assumptions. Where, in contrast, I assume indifference, ill will, or antipathy, I am more likely to meet with them. Interactions with parents, as some of the earliest encounters a child experiences, will powerfully incline the child’s expectations of others. Parents importantly craft the assumptions the child will carry into the wider world, and, insofar as they inspire in the child a conviction that the world is a generous place, she will be more likely to find it so and make it so. Parents’ efforts in shaping the child’s skills and character are a formidable element in promoting a sense of indebtedness, but Kongzi also provides some indication that gratitude is additionally owed parents in recognition of what their efforts entail for them and the sort of lives they may lead. While any relationship will require that its participants forego narrow selfinterest and extend themselves, the nature of the relation parents have to their children increases the vulnerability of such a posture by an order of magnitude perhaps unmatched by any other relationship. The one to whom the parent initially devotes care and affection is an unknown, unknowable

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other. Where other species of relation allow us to measure what we offer in relation to judgments about the qualities and character of the other, here we can have no such reassurances, and indeed the parent must take charge of developing the character of her child. She must simultaneously love the child and actively work to make the child worthy of love. She must, moreover, do so while suffering more-prosaic concerns regarding the child’s well-being and health. While any human affection perhaps entails a concern with such matters, here too the parent’s position is unique. She is charged not just with caring that her child thrives, but with doing what is in her power to secure such thriving. Consequently, parenthood requires a sacrifice not only of narrow self-interest but also of equanimity. Kongzi acknowledges this when he urges children not to give parents any cause for worry other than the worry for the child’s health (2.6). To be a parent, he tacitly acknowledges, is to be anxious, to surrender oneself to another and to fortune in ways that will assail one’s peace. It is to undertake a deliberate vulnerability and render oneself defenseless against certain species of distress. In recognizing this feature of the parent’s posture, the child is both reassured that there are others in the world who care as much as she about her well-being and compelled to recognize what it costs them. They are, in a significant way, at her mercy and at the mercy of her fate. The child is thus never alone, never lonely, in her own interests. The project of her life, its fruits and injuries, its enjoyments and sorrows, are always shared. Recognizing this, and what it costs her parents, generates a sense of concern and commitment, the obligation to avoid provoking unnecessary distress, certainly, but also to cultivate emotions appropriate to what her parents sacrifice in their own lives in their care for her. One might object that the portrait of parents’ care and the child’s consequent indebtedness suggested by Kongzi risks endorsing an image of parents that is excessively valorized or sentimental. We may well grant that parents shape a child’s abilities, attitudes, and dispositions while tolerating measures of anxiety uncommon to other human relationships, yet we may retain some suspicion that a too heroic estimation of the parent is undermined by recognizing that this is simply what parents do and that at least some do it badly. That is, parenting is one of the most commonplace of human activities, and its ubiquity should render us suspicious of overstating what it entails. We may also recognize the potency of parents in shaping a child’s identity and world but note that this power is often—whether through ineptitude, neglect, or outright moral failure—mismanaged. Despite Kongzi’s aspirational orientation, I do not believe he is insensitive to such realities. Indeed, Kongzi’s valorization of parenthood relies in some measure on just these realities, as is evident if we consider the larger sensibility in play, a sensibility that significantly resembles that suggested by Kongzi’s insights regarding ritual.

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MAGIC AND THE ORDINARY In his seminal study Confucius: The Secular as Sacred, Herbert Fingarette avers that one of Kongzi’s most remarkable insights consists in locating the ethical power that resides in the performance of conventional and often quiteordinary patterns of conduct. Fingarette surveys Kongzi’s account of ritual and its efficacy at effortlessly directing people toward accord and discerns in it a “magical” element.26 The “magic” of ritual resides in the capacity of the noncoercive and subtle gesture to steer the responses of others. Ritual elaborates and ornaments the desires of human beings to achieve relation with one another, taking our natural inclinations for community and developing these into refined and enriching enactments of life-patterning values. Something like the magical quality Fingarette discerns in ritual also obtains in Kongzi’s understanding of the parent-child relation. This relation is, like ritual, both a foundational metaphor for wider human experiences as well as a structure that sustains them. Its magic resides in the way in which human beings function as world-makers for one another, their subtle interactions influencing the world as another knows and experiences it. While all human beings in a community possess the capacity to exercise such an influence, the power of a parent for a child is a paradigmatic case in which this power is maximally effective and realized. In it, all worlds begin. Where I apprehend this, I am obliged to acknowledge the sociality of the human being, the generative power of the human community to extend itself, and my own extension within it. I am not a solitary creature but one made by and with others, and I am possessed of my own powers of world creation for others. I apprehend that through distinctively human practices and relationships, each person comes to herself by way of myriad others. These others are most foundationally her parents, but each relation entails others and thus gives access to an enlarged sense of self and personal meaning. I am made by my parents as they were made by theirs. In the idiom of the old American South, I have “a people” and such affords me a wider sense of location and belonging. I achieve an overflight through which I discern my life as manifesting the lives of myriad others whose traces register in the world as I know and experience it. Here again, however, the overflight Kongzi performs abjures that which is ambitious and obviously globalizing in favor of that which roots wider insight in the familiar and prosaic. The parent-child relationship is at once indicative of a magical worldmaking power and utterly banal. The profundity of the parent’s effect rarely resides in the dramatic or explicit, in any particular act or gesture. It instead emerges through an accumulation of days and years, the parent steering the child as wind moves the grass.27 Indeed, as many parents are uncomfortably aware, much of what they teach is taught inadvertently by simply being the people who they are, providing patterns of action and attitude for the child

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by merely enacting their own. The child’s response to this subtle instruction is, even where the child is acutely aware of her indebtedness, similarly banal. While Kongzi is skeptical of the rather thin care his contemporaries offered their parents—observing with some acidity the tendency of children to discharge their duty through care no more elaborate than that shown animals (2.7)—what he recommends in place of such merely obligatory performances is still not the stuff of the dramatic or obvious. He counsels, for example, the regulation of demeanor so that even the most ordinary conduct will be invested with testimony to an appropriately affectionate disposition (Analects 2.8). While some of his recommendations, not least the three-year mourning period, may seem quite demanding, the governing worth of even the elaborate gesture remains the surety of ordinary affection persistently held and consistently expressed through a calendar of unexceptional days and years. Understanding the subtle quality of the parent-child relationship allows us to consider why it matters little that parenting is so ubiquitous or at least sometimes poorly practiced. While not all parents will “move” their children toward fruitful and flourishing lives and while parenting itself is unexceptional, these two features endow good parenting with a refined species of heroism. As is true with ritual, the virtue that Kongzi locates in parenthood relies on an everyday mastery that foregoes the easy bravery of a moment in favor of persistent and pervasive subtle effort. Such is the heroism of modesty, of power gently exercised through an endurance of days and years. The good parent does well what all parents are charged to do, and that some clearly fail serves to recall to attention the difficulty of such a posture. The parent must make magic out of the prosaic supplies of a shared life with a vulnerable and malleable other. Where we understand the burden that such a project entails, we are more likely to achieve sympathetic understanding with at least some failures, and the commonplace work of parenting will be invested with an enchanting aspect otherwise unperceived. Kongzi’s hope, I suspect, is that where we assiduously attend to the quiet heroism that good parenting requires, we will find that our parents, be they sagely or not, possess some share of this enchantment and consequently our affection will find increase. The child’s disposition toward affection and care, that is, need not rely on any simple reciprocity measured against what she is offered, but may find supplement in a sense of the “sacred” that attaches to the wider practices in which she and her parents have a share.

SORROW’S SANCTION Having discussed something of the lived significance of the parent-child relationship, it is possible to address more directly just how the end of this relation may culminate in rationally warranted and profoundly ethical grief.

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Where I bring understanding to bear on what the loss of a parent entails for the child, sorrow finds its sanction. As I have argued elsewhere, the social constitution of the person entails that bereavement will register not simply as a loss of another but as a loss of self.28 That is, where I understand myself in accord with the relations I enjoy with others, the loss of relation produces a necessary rupture in self-understanding, the bereaved no longer able to be the person she has been. What I wish to suggest here is that while the loss of parents displays many of the features of other species of bereavement, there is, as Kongzi intimates, something distinctive, and distinctively severe, in the pain and dislocation it engenders. Like other species of bereavement, the loss of a parent requires that the survivor relinquish the role entailed by his or her relation. The child is, upon the deaths of her parents, no longer a child. Unlike other relations, however, this role may be especially difficult to abandon. In many species of loss, the bereaved lose a relation that they have acquired in the course of their lives. Where I lose a friend or spouse, I can in some measure understand the loss as a return to an earlier, unattached state. I have not always had my friend or my spouse, and thus the absence of either may register as familiar or, perhaps more modestly, will find precedent in my past.29 The roles I have enjoyed with friend and spouse were not always mine to play. Where I lose my parents, however, the absence is unprecedented. There is no past to which I can refer where they do not feature as part of my experience and lived self-understanding. I have been without my friend, I have been unmarried, but I have never been orphaned. Such is a reality utterly new. Any loss will awaken a painful sense of solitude—without my friend or spouse, I find myself alone as the repository of memories, habits, and patterns of shared joy and interaction—but to lose one’s parents is to be alone as one has never been before. The landscape of personal identity this loss entails is wholly uncharted, and the alteration between who I have been and who I must now become registers as seismic. Thus, while on a map of mortality patterns this loss is unexceptional, on a map of personal relationships nothing can be more shocking. The age of my parents may dictate an anticipation of their deaths as a matter of well-reasoned expectation, yet what I thereby expect is a sort of life I have never lived. We can parse the solitude of the orphaned in a number of ways, and while much of sorrow will confess its origins in the irreducibly particular features of a child and her parents—the idiosyncratic and elusive aspects of any relation that defy summary representation—some general elements bear remark. To the extent that parents are just those who, unlike most or all others, will care for my well-being as much as I, in losing them I lose the potent reassurance that my fate is not mine alone. While it is possible that I will find others who so care for me, such will be my good fortune, a stroke of luck rather than an expectation easily fulfilled. Moreover, even where I

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find companions who profoundly share an interest in my well-being, such is unlikely to manifest in ways that resemble a parent’s care. Perhaps an anecdote will illustrate. A friend recently described sitting beside her mother’s hospital bed as the woman suffered with mortal illness. When the daughter expressed an intention to leave the hospital briefly, her mother encouraged her to wear a sweater for protection from the autumn chill. As my friend recounted this episode, she observed that neither her having attained the mature age of sixty, nor the fact that her mother lay on what both knew to be her deathbed, could supplant her mother’s gentle worry. Losing her mother, she realized, meant that there would be no one to remind her to carry a sweater. Her mother’s interest, here the prosaic stuff of maternal solicitude for a child’s comfort and health, can find no analogue in the care we typically expect, and I suspect often prefer, from others. It is distinctive and singular, the reassurance it offers wholly particular to the relation between parent and child. Such also illuminates the way in which the death of a parent operates to render the child an adult in a way she has not been before. As children we bear reminding to carry our sweaters and, for a mother, our reaching sixty years old cannot wholly elide the children we have been. The solicitude and interest of a parent for a child does not operate in the isolation of a discrete moment, but out of a fullness of time and shared experience. The parent is the person for whom I am at once myself in its current iteration and all I have been, from wailing infant to child and onward. The parent recalls a past that patterns present interaction, rendering it pregnant with an authority that few—if any—others can achieve. Moreover, it is the parent who most directly connects the child to a past that reaches beyond her birth, the authoritative bond that attaches her to the people from whom she is descended and the past her own life carries forward. For parents guide in view of how they have been guided, embodying the traditions and history of a shared and extended familial narrative. My parent thus represents my beginning and beyond, perceiving me as most others cannot and apprehending a reach of time that lends continuity to my life and the lives from which it issues. With the death of the parent, then, the child is not only bereft of her own childhood but also charged with articulating her own, unmediated, bond to the long reach of her personal and familial past. She must become her own memory and guide. The child is unmoored from that which most directly bound her, and such is a freedom certainly, but a terrible freedom fraught with great risk.30 She is charged with carrying on, but she is alone in doing so. Moreover, she must carry on with a heretofore unknown authority, becoming for subsequent generations the sustaining connection to the past her parents afforded her. In losing her parents, she becomes an adult because she is no more someone’s child. She is responsible for herself and for others as she has never been and such fosters a terrible loneliness.

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The solitude of the child bereft of her parents is additionally encouraged by the way in which this species of loss resists the softening possibility that those we have loved can find substitute or, more precisely, that the species of affection we have shared can be shared again in new refinements with others. To return to my earlier comparison, where I lose a friend or spouse, my pain can perhaps find some redemptive or compensatory relief in the prospect of future, similar relations. While each relation enjoys a singularity and particularity that defies replication, I may yet find a future with another spouse or friend, and this prospect offers a redemptive quality to loss. I will never enjoy just what I enjoyed before, yet the skills and affection I achieved in these relations may not be wholly lost, for they may find purchase with others. My capacity to be a spouse or a friend remains despite my having lost its object. Where I lose my parents, however, there can be no such compensation, nor indeed will I find any ready surrogate. We may find others who are “like parents” to us, but they are always and only “like”; any proxy will remain just that, a substitute for someone irredeemably lost. A new friend or spouse will be friend or spouse, different from those I have lost certainly, but able to fulfill with completeness the roles they inhabit. One cannot, however, acquire new parents. There are no others who can with completeness operate as a parent does, for even if another could assume something of the solicitude and care of a parent, they cannot appropriate or approximate the initial magic of the parent’s world-making power. The relation with parents thus terminates, in a way more definitive and final, an integral feature of who I am and can be. The termination of the child’s relation to her parents is, to be sure, an expected event. As such, under some constructions of grief, it may appear to constitute less of a deprivation than other species of grief. Grief perhaps often reflects the dislocation of losing a desired future and the self anticipated within that future. The death of a friend entails not just the loss of present companionship, but also the loss of a hopefully awaited future with my companion. In losing a friend, I am rendered bereft not only of the person I am within the relation, but the person I might have, and wished to, become. The deaths of parents do not well accord with this model, for the nature of the relation naturally and perhaps even emphatically includes an anticipation of bereavement. The mature child cannot reasonably imagine the relation extending indefinitely into a future horizon. However, here again the potential for a softening of pain is frustrated by the unprecedented isolation engendered by the loss and by the unusual impotence that accompanies anticipation. While the bereft child is not denied a rationally expected future by the loss of her parents, she is deprived of what Kongzi conceives as one of the central projects of a well-lived life: the effort of the affectionate child to settle her debt with her parents. What anticipation of bereavement typically

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buys is the opportunity to reassure the dying of our affection and care, to make clear the magnitude of our feeling and appreciation for the part the other has played in securing the quality of our lives. Where I know I shall lose my companion, I will more freely spend the coins of our shared affection, making-explicit commitments which are often left unexpressed. However, where it is my parents whose end I foresee, the debt cannot be settled. No wealth of expression, in words or deeds, can discharge this particular balance, for it is simply too great.31 What does one offer those who most directly give one oneself? Such is a task impossible in life, but one rendered finally so in death. While parents live, the child may conduct her life in ways that acknowledge what they have given her, but the most potent resources she will possess—completing her own life so that its totality is dignified by virtue and rearing her own family in accord with virtue and the particular traditions she inherits—reside in a future her parents will not and cannot share. She will only approximate payment of her debt long after those who stood her surety are gone, and such accentuates her impotence to do so for them. They are her beginning but can be offered no share in her end. The child who apprehends her parents’ foundational role in crafting the world she inhabits will suffer their deaths as an event entirely particular and without parallel, yet she will additionally find that there is much here that casts into sharp relief wider truths about human experience. The power of her parents is unlike any other that she will experience, and the distress engendered by their deaths originates, in some measure, in the experience of power’s decline, of the realities of decay and dying. For the very young child, a parent exercises a power akin to that of a god, the parent possessed of abilities and understanding that the child can only dimly assay. As the child grows into maturity and assumes her own power, the full humanity of the parent becomes increasingly evident, yet the self-reflective child will simultaneously apprehend with greater empathy what parents achieve. The source of their magic becomes more apparent, but as a fellow practitioner, the child appreciates the delicate and fine nature of the power they exercise. Insofar as parents inspire in the child an enchantment with the world-making capacity human beings possess for one another, she will find in their decline into old age and its attendant frailties that which remarks the limitations of all human power. Her “gods” are human, and in apprehending this she takes their measure and the measure of the human project, its fleeting and provisional fineness. All people decline and die, but to see one’s parents do so, to witness the waning of this uniquely potent and foundational power, is to apprehend the exquisite fragility of the whole human edifice. The structures upon which we rely and in which we find our origin are evanescent. The passing of one generation entails the passing of power and authority, and such is the way of things. Yet the child who apprehends this must feel acutely her responsibility to manage well what she is bequeathed

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while knowing that its persistence can never be assured. She must “give of herself utterly,” yet even so cannot trust that it will abide.

CONCLUSION In Shakespeare’s Hamlet, Gertrude observes Hamlet’s melancholy upon the death of his father and is uneasily bemused.32 Why, she wonders, given how natural it is for fathers to die, should Hamlet take it so hard? She and King Claudius reproach Hamlet for his enduring sorrow by observing the general patterns of mortality, giving eloquent voice to the suspicion that the death of a parent is, among deaths more generally, unworthy of pronounced and prolonged grief. Nature’s “common theme is death of fathers,” Claudius observes. To grieve heartily and long such a death “shows a will most incorrect to heaven, / A heart unfortified, a mind impatient, / An understanding simple and unschool’d.” Gertrude reminds her son of this and of the wider reach of mortality, urging Hamlet, “Thou know’st ‘tis common; all that lives must die.” Hamlet’s reply is terse: “Ay, madam, it is common.” “If it be,” Gertrude asks, “Why seems it so particular with thee?” Hamlet’s answer bespeaks at once dismay and despair: “Seems, madam! nay, it is; I know not ‘seems.’ ” He upbraids his mother for mistaking his melancholic mien for an assumed despair, the “inky cloak” of mourning one can don or shed as one wills. Were his grief but an elective posture, he could relinquish it, but he has “that within that passeth show.” Hamlet offers a sensibility near to that suggested by Kongzi. Grief for the death of a parent finds its warrant in the understanding that there is here a loss distinctively disturbing. The death of the parent is “so particular” for the child. The counsel that would encourage us to find it otherwise elides the distinction between what is common for humanity as a whole and what registers as utterly singular in my own experience. The power visited upon me by my parents will not arise again; its passing marks a change unlike any other I will experience. In my parents, the world is made, and in their deaths, it comes undone. To be sure, death is the “common theme” of human experience, and the deaths of parents are but a rather ordinary variation on that theme. Yet, Kongzi would aver, where I seek a life made finer by the enchantments and grace of an achieved humanity with others, such a posture can only register as a feigned worldliness, an indolent abstraction that can only betray me.

NOTES I would like to thank both Garret Olberding and P. J. Ivanhoe for their helpful comments on early drafts of this essay. 1. Here and throughout the essay, the deaths of parents should be understood to refer to ordinary deaths that come after what is presumably a reasonably full span

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of life. The deaths of parents to which the classical Chinese ritual documents and Kongzi himself generally refer are not, that is, exceptional cases of premature or tragic death. Thus, the bereft “children” these documents would instruct are correspondingly mature adults capable of performing the ritual obligations to the dead with which they are charged. There is no presumption that it is a special or unusual circumstance, such as the early orphaning of a young child, that generates sorrow. 2. I do not here wish to suggest that nature plays no role in generating grief. That is, grief for children or for parents must be understood to have natural dimensions that operate regardless of cultural meanings. My target is simply how societies emphasize one species of grief over another. 3. Jacques Derrida, Aporias, trans. Thomas Dutoit (Stanford, Calif.: Stanford University Press, 1993), 43. 4. Analects 19.17. Although this claim appears in what is commonly judged to be a later stratum of the Analects and is also reported by a student rather than more directly ascribed to Kongzi, the substance of the claim is consonant with the emphasis on mourning parents found elsewhere in the text. Quotations from the Analects are from The Analects of Confucius, trans. Roger T. Ames and Henry Rosemont, Jr. (New York: Ballantine Books, 1998). Most subsequent references are given in the text of the essay. 5. Analects 7.1. Here, Kongzi declares that he follows the traditions of the ancients in what he offers. This claim is perhaps misleading. While Kongzi clearly does aim at the preservation of tradition, it is likewise clear that he does not do so uncritically but aims to enliven tradition with a distinctively philosophical sensibility. 6. Athough there are likely many reasons for this, I suspect that one quite substantial reason resides in the sensibility I lay out later, namely, that sorrow for the deaths of parents is considered a particularly irrational species of grief. 7. See, e.g., Analects 3.4, where Kongzi avers that authentic grief is preferable to extravagant mourning, and Analects 19.14, where he suggests that mourning ought be indexed to grief. 8. I am indebted to my colleague Hugh Benson for (perhaps inadvertently) suggesting this line of reasoning. 9. This koan is traditionally ascribed to Sengai (Zen Flesh, Zen Bones, ed. Paul Reps and Nyogen Senzaki [Boston: Shambhala, 1957], 122). 10. Yan Hui did of course die before Kongzi, much to Kongzi’s regret. Kongzi’s response to the loss is described in Analects 11.8–11. For a discussion of Kongzi’s response, see Amy Olberding, “The Consummation of Sorrow: An Analysis of Confucius’ Grief for Yan Hui,” Philosophy East and West 54 (2004): 279–301. 11. I borrow this term from Philippe Ariès’s seminal work on death in the later Western tradition, The Hour of Our Death, trans. Helen Weaver (New York: Oxford University Press, 1981). 12. See Philip J. Ivanhoe, “Death in the Analects,” in this volume. 13. See, e.g., Kongzi’s responses to the deaths of his students Bo Niu (6.10) and Yan Hui (11.8–11). 14. I borrow this term from Pierre Hadot, who employs it to denote the ability, recommended by many of the Western ancients, to enlarge understanding through the deliberate employment of reason to contextualize particular phenomena within

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the wider patterns of the cosmos. See Hadot, Philosophy as a Way of Life, ed. Arnold I. Davidson, trans. Michael Chase (Cambridge, Mass.: Blackwell, 1995), 98. 15. This is the outcome for which Zhuangzi so powerfully argues. For a discussion of his view, see Mark Berkson’s essay in this volume and Roger Ames, “Death as Transformation in Classical Daoism,” in Death and Philosophy, ed. Jeff Malpas and Robert C. Solomon (New York: Routledge, 1998). 16. See, e.g., Analects 2.21, where Kongzi claims that, despite his having no official position in government, he serves government by being a filial son and good brother. 17. I do not wish to deny that the social promotion of grief has a role in motivating grief. I suspect that it is more difficult to motivate an emotion that meets with social disapproval than to motivate one that meets with approbation. Thus, insofar as political and social commitments stimulate admiration for those who demonstrate grief, individuals will be more likely to incline toward sorrow. 18. See, e.g., Analects 4.18. Here, Kongzi sympathetically counsels children regarding their responsibilities to parents who stray from the way. He offers that children ought remonstrate but, if unheeded, should maintain respect. Notably, he also counsels against resentment, tacitly acknowledging the difficulty of preserving good feeling where parents are in some measure unworthy. 19. To be clear, I here refer not to cases in which parents brutalize their children but to popular debates about what might be deemed “styles” of parenting. 20. While it must be noted that a significant proportion of the child’s debt was considered, by the early Confucians, as attributable to the parents’ having given life to the child, I shall leave this aside in what follows. Instead, I focus here on the shared relational elements of the parent-child dynamic, those features of the relation most subject to modification and elaboration by the individuals in the relation. For a discussion of the problems attached to debt for the “gift of life,” see Philip J. Ivanhoe, “Filial Piety as a Virtue,” in Working Virtue: Virtue Ethics and Contemporary Moral Problems, eds., Rebecca Walker and Philip J. Ivanhoe, (Oxford University Press, 2007) esp. 300–3. 21. See Analects 17.21. The three-year mourning period, it should be noted, was actually just over two years in duration. That is, one was obliged to mourn into the third year after a parent’s death. 22. “Area Baby Doesn’t Have Any Friends,” The Onion 41–46 (16 November 2005); available at http://www.theonion.com/content/node/42599. 23. As will be evident in what follows, I do not draw any strong analogy between parents and friends. There are, for the Confucians, considerable differences between the two. 24. It is perhaps also useful to observe that the worth of such claims for parents may be dubious as well. Although such a perspective could function as a helpful check on any tendency of a parent to demand unreasonable measures of care or affection, it does not otherwise promote what we would readily judge to be adequate parenting. That is, performing one’s parental role out of a sense of moral duty risks eliding significant elements of good parenting, such as appropriate affection, that resist representation as commands of duty. 25. William James, The Will to Believe (New York: Dover Publications, 1956), 24.

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26. Herbert Fingarette, Confucius: The Secular as Sacred (New York: Harper and Row, 1972), esp. chap. 1. 27. In Analects 12.19, Kongzi claims that the power of the virtuous ruler for his people manifests in a way akin to the wind bending the grass. In using this claim here, I rely on the analogue Kongzi draws between the state and the family and between the ruler and the father. 28. Olberding, “The Consummation of Sorrow.” 29. I hasten to qualify this claim by noting that some acquired relationships, e.g., exceptionally long-lived marriages, may be of such a duration as to render the precedents of a past without them functionally useless. Moreover, that I can conceive my life without a beloved spouse or friend should not be taken as indication that such a loss would, prima facie, be easier to bear than the loss of a parent. There are, of course, too many variations in human relationships to sustain such an immodest claim. 30. Kongzi is, I believe, quite alert to the perilous freedom enjoyed by the bereft. He is, moreover, aware that grief can corrupt their judgment and render them ill-equipped to manage the aftermath of loss. The formal structures provided by ritualized mourning are, in part, aimed at aiding the bereft in navigating this territory. For example, the injunction that children ought not to depart from the way of their father for three years following his death can be construed as a protection against inept or ill-considered decisions made in the midst of sorrow. See Analects 1.11 and 4.20. For more on the function of mourning, see Olberding, “Slowing Death Down: Mourning in the Analects,” in Confucius Now: Contemporary Encounters with the Analects, ed. David Jones (LaSalle, Ill.: Open Court Press, 2008), 137–149. 31. This element of my argument, I believe, most emphatically requires the aspirational sensibility of Kongzi. Although I suspect that Kongzi and I would disagree, I would maintain that the inability to “repay” what parents offer must presuppose parents of reasonably high virtue and generosity. Parents whose influence is pernicious (while yet not strictly immoral) could be understood to have “paid out” less to their children, consequently rendering the discharge of filial debt possible. Additionally, while our debts to nonparents may be of a different type, I by no means rule out the prospect of acquired relationships of such life-shaping value that these too defy “repayment.” 32. The following quotations all appear in I.2.66–120 of William Shakespeare, Hamlet, ed. Sylvan Barnet (New York: Signet Classic, 1998). I am indebted to my brother, Bruce Olberding, for reminding me that Shakespeare said first (and much better) some of what I wish to argue here.

SEVEN

ALLOTMENT AND DEATH IN EARLY CHINA Mark Csikszentmihalyi

Different kinds of deaths resonate in different ways. Questions such as “Why did a person die?” often arise when a death is unusual—accidental, earlier than usual, or particularly prolonged or painful. Behind these questions is an implication or expectation that there is a “typical” death: a normal life span and process of dying. A grieving person might ask about divergences from this norm. What is the reason that some people have usual deaths and others are denied them? Is it a matter of luck, a plan, or a function of the way the people lived their lives? In English, the term “allotment” connotes the process of dividing into lots and comes from the meaning of “lot” as an object used to determine a person’s share or portion—similar to when we “draw straws” to see who has to take on a particularly dangerous or unpleasant task. The word “allotment” is used to talk about life span, or the share of time that is apportioned to a person. As in the expression “casting lots,” the random element introduced by shaking or hiding a set of lots is central to many explanations of differential life spans. The metaphor implies that the length of each person’s life is usually determined by external forces, and if he or she dies young, it is just bad luck. While there is usually no single explanation for complex cultural phenomena, one function of the idea of allotments may be therapeutic. It allows the question “Why did a person die?” to remain fundamentally unresolved (because the person’s lot is determined arbitrarily) while at the same time ruling out certain troubling answers (because the random process of casting determined the person’s lot, other types of causation are ruled out). In other

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words, the idea that a person’s death is a matter of “blind fate” is not trivial, because it denies the possibility that the unusual death was a punishment or otherwise a reflection of behavior. In ancient China, the term ming 命 played a role somewhat analogous to that of “lot.”1 At the popular level, the former word may have performed the therapeutic function outlined above, but it also was something thought to have been affected by the actions of the living. In pre-imperial China, a popular view was that one’s lot was arbitrarily determined in the celestial bureaucracy, but it also was possible for one to petition and sacrifice so as to affect one’s own or another person’s time of death. By contrast, in the early Confucian picture, views of contingency were more complex. When the Kongzi of the Analects (Lunyu 論語) mourns the “short allotment” of his favorite disciple, there is no indication that this lot could be changed. This essay will contrast the popular view of life span as an initially arbitrary lot that may be affected through practice to two related views in the Analects that comment on death based on rather different cosmological premises. In so doing, it will argue that these different views of death entail alternative views of the cosmos.

THE “MANAGER OF ALLOTMENTS” AND POPULAR NOTIONS OF ALLOTMENT The “Manager of Allotments” (Siming 司命) was a deity concerned with life span who was the object of sacrifice as early as the fourth century B.C.E. Sacrifices to the Manager of Allotments, sometimes literally to his apotropaic likeness, were carried out by individuals, and he was also the object of official state sacrifice and liturgical performances. There is circumstantial evidence from the late Warring States period, and direct evidence in the Early Empire, that one of the ends of such sacrifice was influencing the registers that he managed, registers that kept track of people’s life spans. The earliest reference to the deity Siming is from a late Spring and Autumn period bronze inscription on a vessel known as the Huanzi Meng Jiang 洹子孟姜 hu 壺 vessel. The inscription commemorates the offering of jade rings, a pair of hu vessels, and eight ding 鼎 vessels to a “great” (da 大) “Manager of Allotments.”2 Archaeologically discovered texts—such as the Chu bamboo slips discovered at Tianxingguan 天星觀 and Baoshan 包山—show that the Manager of Allotments was seen as a powerful deity in the fourth century B.C.E. The former set of slips mentions two sacrifices to him, once of a sheep and once of a “sacrificial animal.” At Tianxingguan, the deity is paired with another deity called the “Manager of Misfortunes” (Sihuo 司禍).3 The latter Baoshan find puts the Manager of Allotments on two lists of astral and historical deities, recipients of sacrifice following tortoise shell divinations about an official’s illness in 316 B.C.E. At Baoshan,

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a sheep was sacrificed to the deity. Finally, a late Warring States petition found in a Qin tomb at Fangmatan 放馬灘 explicitly connects the deity to an appeal of someone’s death on the grounds that the person died too early. The petition is addressed to one Gongsun Qiang 公孫強, identified as a clerk for the Manager of Allotments.4 These finds indicate that very early on, the Manager of Allotments was connected to preserving, extending, ending, and, in one case, resuming life. The same title turns up in the received tradition as an object of official Zhou state sacrifice. The “Spring Offices” (“Chunguan 春官”) chapter of the Rites of Zhou (Zhouli 周禮) describes a Zhou period official’s responsibilities for carrying out auspicious rituals to the deities of the three realms in the states and principalities. In particular, this official is in charge of carrying out you 槱 (literally, “bonfire”) offerings to four astral deities: the “Manager of the Center” (Sizhong 司中), the Manager of Allotments, the “Master of Wind” (Fengshi 飌師), and the “Master of Rain” (Yushi 雨師).5 The Records of Ritual (Liji 禮記) puts the Manager of Allotments at the beginning of sets of five and seven sacrifices to state deities by the king and feudal lords, respectively. In the “Model Sacrifices” (“Jifa 祭法”) chapter, the deity is part of a list of supervisory roles that includes the “central rainwater collector” (zhongliu 中霤) and “state gateway” (guomen 國門). In these examples, sacrifices are carried out for the preservation and protection of the body politic, implying that the allotment in question is that of the ruler or of the state. These traces of Zhou period sacrifices to the Manager of Allotments do not directly specify the nature of the deity, although in both cases it appears in the company of spirits associated with protection or danger for the individual or the state. There are two later sources which provide much more detailed snapshots of the deity, the Songs of Chu (Chuci 楚辭) and the Collected Explanations of Popular Customs (Fengsu tongyi 風俗通義). These sources are more specific about how the deity kept track of life spans in something like the manner that later Daoist deities did. The earlier of these two sources comes from what David Hawkes calls a “religious drama,” the “Nine Songs” (“Jiuge 九歌”) section of the Songs of Chu, which he dates to the period between 241 and 223 B.C.E. The playbooks for this drama have the Manager of Allotments saying at one point: 紛總 總兮九州 何壽夭兮在予 “The teeming masses of the Nine Territories / Their long life or early death rests with me!”6 The central trope of the piece is that of a human visiting the deity and returning, perhaps recounting a shamanic journey. A later source that gives insight into popular sacrifice to the Manager of Allotments is Ying Shao’s 應劭 (fl. 189–194 C.E.) Collected Explanations of Popular Customs. Ying’s descriptions of popular customs are invaluable, but as a regional official charged with their regulation, he takes a disdain-

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ful attitude toward them. In his entry on the Manager of Allotments, Ying quotes the Zhouli description, explaining that the “Manager of Allotments” refers to the Wenchang 文昌 asterism, whereas “Managers of the Center” refer to the six stars of the nearby Santai 三台 asterism. He then describes the public liturgy to the Manager of Allotments: 今民間獨祀司命耳 刻木長尺二寸為人像 行者檐篋中 居者別作 小屋 齊地 大尊重之 汝南餘郡亦多有 Today, ordinary folk only sacrifice to the Manager of Allotments. They carve a piece of wood that is one chi two shou [i.e., roughly forty cm] high into a human shape, and those who travel with it carry it in a box while those who remain create a separate little house for it. In [the territory of the old state of] Qi they have great reverence for [this deity], and such practices also are common in Runan and other commanderies.7 This describes a Han dynasty public ceremony for the veneration of the Manager of Allotments, held along the eastern seaboard, that fits with other descriptions of the use and veneration of apotropaic figures. Jia Yanhong 賈艷紅 draws several parallels with other Han sources and concludes that “this shows that in the Han dynasty popular imagination, the Manager of Allotments already had descended from the Heavens and was responsible for the registration and writs of demons and spirits, and managed the registers for the underworld.”8 Neither an “Angel of Death” nor exactly a “Grim Reaper,” the early Chinese Manager of Allotments was a bureaucratic entity that was integrated into multiple pantheons of deities responsible for personal wellbeing. His particular function was to keep track of aging and death, and, as a recipient of petitions and sacrifice, he could protect the individuals who offered them, as well as increase their life spans. The bureaucratic nature of the deity implied that, whereas ultimately one’s life span was out of one’s control, there were pathways by which one might influence it. Yet the potential for error in a bureaucracy also meant that the system had some of the arbitrary or capricious elements implied by the metaphor of “casting lots” in the West. Even if the Manager of Allotments did not dependably confer benefits, his existence likely had the therapeutic effect outlined at the start of this paper on those who sacrificed to him.

YAN YUAN’S ALLOTMENT IN THE ANALECTS The idea of allotment also comes up several times in the Analects, but its appearances are different in several respects. In some cases, the occasion is illness. The disciple Zi Xia 子夏 lost his eyesight, whereas Bo Niu 伯

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牛 had leprosy. In Analects 6.10, Kongzi’s response to Bo Niu’s disease is to bemoan fate: 亡之命矣夫 斯人也而有斯疾也 斯人也而有斯疾也 “Losing him is allotted, is it not? For such a man to have such a disease! For such a man to have such a disease!” The most tragic occasion was the death of Yan Yuan 顏淵, also known as Yan Hui 顏回. When Kongzi and his disciples were in Kuang, Yan Yuan’s death was foreshadowed when the Master thought that Yan had died, but Yan assured him: 子在 回何敢死 “As long as you are alive, how could I dare die?”9 Fortunately, neither died on this occasion. According to the Shiji 史記 (Records of the Historian), Yan’s 年二十九 髮盡白 蚤死 “hair turned completely white in his twenty-ninth year, and he died young.”10 It is when Kongzi extols Yan Yuan’s love of learning in Analects 6.3 and 11.7 that he adds, 不幸短命死矣 “unfortunately his allotment was short, and he died.” Kongzi’s uses of ming are consistent with the popular view of allotments as predetermined, even though the term remains abstract and is not personified as a Manager of Allotments. Yet the Analects does not feature any practices concerning allotment, likely indicating there is no possibility to influence it. Even further, discussions about allotment and death of the moral person is haunted by the ghost of a related but separate issue, the subject of an intense debate between the followers of Mozi 墨子 and those of Kongzi. The idea of individual allotments and the timing of death was complicated by a version of the question of theodicy, whether good things dependably happen to good people. Yan Yuan’s untimely passing was not just a matter of his personal ming; it also concerned tian 天, the ultimate power in the cosmos, which is often translated as “Heaven.” Several aspects of Kongzi’s reaction are detailed in the Analects, but the most famous one is the despondent invocation of tian in Analects 11.9. The verb sang 喪 in Kongzi’s invocation tian sang yu 天喪予 may mean “to devastate” (hence James Legge’s translation “Heaven is destroying me!”) or “to lose” (hence D. C. Lau’s translation “Heaven has bereft me!”). In the latter sense, the verb is used with objects such as ou 偶 (mate) or jia 家 (house) to connote the loss of a spouse or being homeless. Indeed, most traditional commentators read sang in the sense of losing a partner, although the nature of the imputed connection varies. The reading of Analects 11.9 is also often informed by the following passage, which details Kongzi’s emotional reaction to Yan’s death. Analects 11.10 reads: 顏淵死 子哭之慟 從者曰 子慟矣 曰 有慟乎 非夫人之為慟而 誰為 Yan Yuan died. Kongzi’s cries for him reached to the point of crying. His followers said: “You’re crying!”

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MARK CSIKSZENTMIHALYI Kongzi said: “Was I crying? If I did not cry for this man, then for whom would I cry?”

The verb at the center of this passage, tong 慟, connotes being moved and evokes death rituals that involve formalized expressions of grief such as wailing or keening. More than Analects 11.9, then, this passage speaks to the closeness between master and disciple and so implies a deep grief on the master’s part. Nevertheless, traditional commentators often read something else into Kongzi’s comments. Consider once again the statement that Kongzi makes about Yan Yuan elsewhere in the Analects: 不幸短命死矣 “unfortunately his lot was short, and he died.” There, the subject of the sentence is Yan. By contrast, in Analects 11.9, Yan’s death is a matter of what tian is literally doing to Kongzi: in Kongzi’s statement, tian is the subject while “me” is the object. We might read this as simply an example of the phenomenon of the self-centered orator at the funeral who uses the eulogy as a chance to talk about how the deceased helped him attain his own level of greatness. However, many commentators take this not as a comment on Kongzi’s personality but as a sign that Kongzi was reading Yan’s passing as more than an accidental death. For this reason, commentators sometimes read the passage as being less about the arbitrary ming that makes the death a tragedy than an expression of a purposive tianming that makes the death the equivalent of an omen. In the following, I outline three strategies that have been used to read this passage. The first strategy emphasizes the relationship between master and disciple and reads Kongzi’s statements as direct expressions of his emotional distress. Several fragments of the oldest commentaries to the Analects appear to emphasize the grieving aspect of Analects 11.9 and 11.10. Most early commentators in He Yan’s 何晏 (190–249) collection Lunyu jijie 論語集 解 use the vocabulary of grieving. Bao Xian’s 包咸 (ca. 6 B.C.E.–ca. 65 C.E.) commentary defines the interjection in 11.9 as one of injury, while He Yan himself notes that the repetition emphasizes the severity of the pain that Kongzi expresses. Ma Rong’s 馬融 (79–166) comment on the word tong in 11.10 is that it signifies aiguo 哀過 “grief that is excessive,” whereas Kong An’guo 孔安國 explains that Kongzi’s answer shows 不自知己之悲哀過也 “he did not himself know his grief was excessive.” The interpretative line that seems to be marked out by these early comments is completely effaced by later commentators. Of course, it is not clear that the preserved early glosses mentioned by He Yan accurately represent the thrust of all early commentaries. Since He included only selected observations from five early commentators, these explanations of the meanings of particular words might not accurately represent their readings of

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the Yan Yuan story. Indeed, the idea of emotional distress does not sit well with Analects 11.8 and 11.12. In those passages, Kongzi resists the impulse of Yan’s father and the other disciples to use inappropriate funeral rites. If Kongzi was such a stickler there, how is it that in the other passages he is “excessive”? This bothered Huan Maoyong 宦懋庸 (1842–1892), the author of the Lunyu ji 論語稽, who went to pains in arguing that the excess was not excessive. Huan contends that 慟所當慟 則亦不得為過矣 “crying when it is appropriate to cry is not a matter of being excessive.”11 Instead, many later commentators adopt a second strategy and read Kongzi’s grief as only peripherally a matter of the death of an individual; the grief is really a result of the loss of the student to whom he planned to transmit his Way. For the most part, this reading is not incompatible with the first reading, but it rejects the notion that Kongzi’s grieving for Yan Yuan is excessive. The reason Kongzi might mourn Yan more than other disciples is that Yan was next in line in the transmission of his Way. In the Song dynasty, Zhu Xi’s 朱熹 (1130–1200) Lunyu jizhu 論語集注 has this terse comment about Analects 11.9: 悼道無傳 若天喪己也 “[Kongzi] mourns that his Way will not be transmitted; it is as if tian had left him bereft.” This view assumes that Yan had a special status among the disciples and was particularly receptive to Kongzi’s message. The Song writer Qi Menglong 齊夢龍 puts it this way: 回存 則己雖死而道不亡 回死 則其繫己以不亡者 幾何時哉 “As long as [Yan] Hui lived, then even if [Kongzi] died the Way would not be lost, but with Hui dead, how long would [Kongzi] be able to continue to preserve it on his own?” This reading of Kongzi’s words is in many ways an adaptation of an even more popular third reading strategy (discussed next), except revised to fit with Song notions of “the transmission of the Way” (daotong 道統). Qi himself specifies a transmission of the Way from Fu Xi to Kongzi, with Yan Yuan as the prospective next member of the series. The third and most widely accepted reading has to do with the question of whether Kongzi was destined to become the next sage-king. This appears to have been the most popular reading in the Han dynasty. A quotation of Liu Xin 劉歆 preserved in the postface to the biography of Dong Zhongshu 董仲舒 in the Hanshu 漢書 explains it this way:

向子歆以為伊呂 乃聖人之耦 王者不得則不興故顏淵死 孔子曰 噫天喪余 唯此一人為能當之 自宰我子贛子游子夏不與焉 [Liu] Xiang’s son Xin said that “Yi [Yin] and Lü [Shang] were partners to the sage kings. Therefore, when Yan Yuan died, Kongzi said: ‘Oh! Tian has deprived me!’ Only Yan Yuan was a match for Kongzi—Zai Wo, Zi Zhang, Zi You, and Zi Xia could not fulfill this role.”12

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This reading of the passage has Kongzi mourning the loss of Yan not so much as an individual or friend but rather as the sole disciple who could have filled the necessary role of Kongzi’s assistant in ruling the empire. Here, Liu is drawing on a view of the periodic appearance of sage kings that dates back to the Mengzi 孟子.13 Between the eras of the sages arises another figure: 其間必有名世者 “between them necessarily is a mingshi 名世.” There are several different theories about the meaning of mingshi. The earliest commentary, attributed to Zhao Qi 趙岐, explains this phrase as 次聖之才 “one whose talents are second to those of the sage.” He continues: 物來能名 正一世者 生於聖人之間也 “A person who can name things as they arise, and in so doing rectify an age, will be born between sages.”14 This is the role that Huan Tan 桓譚 (d. ca. 32 C.E.) identifies with Yan Yuan: 昔顏淵有高妙次聖之才, 聞一知十 “In the past, Yan Yuan had talents that were marvelous and second only to those of the sage; when he heard one thing he understood ten.” By using the phrase “talents second only to those of the sage” from the Mengzi, Huan underscores the idea that the two of them together formed the pairing of the worthy and sage that was required for an age to succeed.15 This Han dynasty reading of Analects 11.9 was adopted in the influential commentary Lunyu zhengyi 論語正義 by Liu Baonan 劉寶楠 (1791–1855). Liu cites the Hanshu passage and concludes that this sign from tian is exactly why Kongzi cries out: 蓋天生聖人必有賢才為之輔佐 今天生德於夫子 復生顏子為聖 人之耦 並不見用於世 而顏子不幸短命死矣 此亦天亡夫子之徵 故曰天喪予 As a rule, when tian gives birth to a sage there also necessarily is a worthy who serves him as his assistant. At that time, tian gave birth to the virtue in the Master and also gave birth to Yan [Yuan] to be the sage’s partner. However, [Kongzi] was not employed by [the rulers of] his generation, and unfortunately Yan [Yuan’s] “allotment was short, and he died.” This was a sign that tian was abandoning the Master, and so he said: “Tian has left me bereft!”16 Liu’s reading of the passage draws on the language of Zhao Qi’s early commentary to Mengzi 5B13 and endorses the Han reading of Kongzi’s cry as arising from the realization of his inability to apply his virtue to rule the world.17 These three readings of Analects 11.9 and 11.10 are not mutually exclusive in a strict sense. It is possible that Kongzi was grieving for a student and surrogate son, expressing his common project with Yan Yuan through the proper ritual behavior, and bereft at the realization that despite his qualifications he was not to be a sage king. But there are two fundamental

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differences between the distanced discussion of Yan’s attenuated allotment in Analects 6.3 and 11.7 and Kongzi’s strong reaction to Yan’s death in Analects 11.9, and these differences imply that 11.9 probably should be read according to the third interpretation. First is the question of agency. In the discussion of allotment the subject is Yan, while in Analects 11.9 the agent is tian, and ming is not directly mentioned. Second, the discussion of allotment draws a contrast between Yan’s love of learning and his “unfortunate” short allotment. This is the assurance of the arbitrariness of life span seen previously in the discussion of “casting lots,” and it is not part of Analects 11.9. For these reasons, Analects 11.9 probably is not as much an expression of grief that Yan drew the “short lot,” as arguably are the other Analects passages; rather, it is likely about the implications of the death in terms of Kongzi’s potential to implement his social and political system across China.

CONCLUSION: CAN ONE LENGTHEN ONE’S ALLOTMENT? The differences among these passages in the Analects suggests a tension between a model of the cosmos associated with a somewhat arbitrary ming and one associated with a providential tianming. In this section, I will argue that such a difference in popular and elite conceptions of allotment is rooted in the history of the use of tian and ming in such contexts. Tianming 天命 is usually translated as “mandate of Heaven,” and it is used in early sources such as the Shangshu 尚書 (i.e., Book of Documents) to describe the endorsement and aid given to a virtuous ruler by Heaven when the state itself falls into dire straits. As such, receiving tianming was a function of the recipient’s moral virtue, and losing it was a result of immorality. Sources such as the Guoyu and Zuozhuan contain examples of rulers who doom themselves by their immoral actions, as the Duke of Guo does. A vestige of this view is seen in Kongzi’s statement in Analects 9.5 that 天之未喪斯文也 匡人其如予何 “As long as tian has not destroyed this culture, how can the people of Kuang do so?” Contrast this with the use of the two constituent halves of the term in Analects 12.5. There, Sima Niu 司馬牛 complains that while others have brothers, he alone has none. Zi Xia replies that such things are out of his control, but that Sima is able to attain certain things which will make his fellow citizens his figurative brothers. Here, tian and ming determine areas of life such as whether Sima was born an only child: 死生有命 富貴在天 “Life and death are a matter of ming, while riches and nobility are a matter of tian.” Sima has the capacity to become a metaphorical brother to others through his actions in an area of life that he does control, since that is only an internal matter of 君子敬而無失, 與人恭而有禮 “a gentleman [being] reverent and without error, respectful and ritually proper.”18 In the worldview of tianming, a person’s virtue may result in protection from tian, but ming for Sima denies the possibility that virtue could affect factors such as life span.

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These same contrasting viewpoints may be seen in other early sources that treat the story of Kongzi and his disciples when they ran low on food. In Analects 15.2, the master and his disciples are running out of supplies in Chen (modern Huaiyang in Henan) and becoming too weak to stand. When Zi Lu 子路 asks him if gentlemen really end up in such distress, Kongzi replies: 君子固窮 小人窮斯濫矣 “A gentleman is steadfast in distress, while a small man in distress will go to extremes.” This dialogue is developed in a number of later sources, at greatest length in the Xunzi 荀子. There, Zi Lu directly states the view that morality brings positive outcomes: 為善者天報之以福, 為不善者天報之以禍 “Those who do good are rewarded by Heaven with good fortune, while those who do bad are rewarded by Heaven with bad fortune.” This description of a providential tian could have come from the Mozi. Kongzi disagrees with that view: 夫遇不遇者 時也 賢不肖者 材也 君子博學深謀 不遇時者多矣 Whether or not one meets with opportunity is a matter of timeliness. Whether one is worthy or not is a matter of ability. Gentlemen who study broadly and plan deeply, and yet do not meet with the proper time, are many. In a study of several versions of this story, John Makeham explains this view of fate as follows: “Through his understanding of the cycles of change the gentleman should bide his time, cultivating himself until the right opportunity comes once again into cycle. This is not so much resignation as strategic planning.”19 Indeed, the Xunzi makes it clear that no amount of “internal” work can overcome a lack of “external” opportunity: 今有其 人 不遇其時 雖賢其能行乎 苟遇其時 何難之有 “Now, if the right man does not meet the right time, even though he is worthy, can he put it into practice? If he meets the right time, what difficulty would there be?”20 Here, it is no more possible for a cultivated person born at the wrong time to become a sage king than it is for Sima Niu to create a brother for himself. The rhetorical force of statements like this one from the Xunzi suggests that they have a didactic element, encouraging self-cultivation in the face of any circumstance. The two points of view described previously are clearly represented in this one Xunzi passage. Zi Lu asks about the providential version of tian in a way that specifically refers to the possibility of tian’s protecting them from death on account of their virtue. Kongzi’s response denies that possibility and says that their lives are really in their own hands. The former view is consistent with Kongzi’s cry that Yan Yuan’s death signaled that tian had deprived Kongzi—Kongzi had hoped that his virtue would be adequate to protect both him and his worthy assistant—while the latter view fits more comfortably with the statement that Yan’s death was a sign of his short

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ming. The coexistence of these two points of view in early China provides the underlying bases behind popular practices that included petitioning and sacrificing to the Manager of Allotments to increase life span on the one hand, and the resignation about death and personal efficacy in parts of the Analects and the Xunzi passage, cited previously, on the other.21 In other words, on the elite level there are multiple theories of allotment, from life span’s being a matter of luck to there being a close correlation between virtue and longevity. On the popular level, these same two extremes are combined into the single image of the not fully reliable bureaucrat in charge of an otherwise-predictable system. The existence of such diverse views about the possibility of extending allotment in early China is obscured by their common recourse to the word ming. From the historical research presented here and the explicit contrast in the Xunzi, it is clear that there are at least two rather-different viewpoints about allotment. Their later confusion is illustrated by Zheng Xuan’s 鄭玄 explanation of the Records of Ritual’s use of the term sanming 三命 (three kinds of allotment). Zheng explains how the Manager of Allotments is 主督察三命 “in charge of overseeing and inspecting the three kinds of allotment.” The Tang dynasty commentator Kong Yingda 孔穎達 (574–648) explains what this meant: 案援神契云 命有三科 有受命以保慶 有遭命以謫暴 有隨命以督行 受命謂年壽也 遭命謂行善而遇凶也 隨命謂隨其善惡而報之 According to the [apocryphal text] Shoushen qi: “Allotment has three branches. There is ‘receiving allotment,’ which is a matter of protection and auspiciousness, there is ‘encountering allotment,’ which is a matter of punishment and violence, and there is ‘following allotment,’ which is a matter of inspecting actions.” “Receiving allotment” means getting a life span that is long. “Encountering allotment” means doing good acts but meeting with disaster. “Following allotment” means following good or bad, and getting the appropriate response for it. Here, different theodicies are reconciled by being grouped as different functions of a single bureaucratic official. Historically speaking, however, Kong is weaving together the dissimilar threads of the rather different views of allotment that coexisted in earlier times. For this reason, there was no uniform answer to the question “Can one lengthen one’s allotment?” in early China. Poo Mu-chou has argued that the view of tianming meant that there was a “negotiation between the ruler and Heaven, since whether the ruler will receive the mandate depends upon his moral behavior.” At the same time, however, he says that “this appears to have been kept at an implicit level,” and so people acted as

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if death were something that was out of their hands.22 Alternatively, one could see these viewpoints as the “survival” of the more ancient political theory of tianming, coupled with the view of a more individualized ming that had an arbitrary component. Either way, the implication is that for the question “Why did a person die?” there was a range of answers, all of which denied the possibility of predicting death. Some of these answers connected one’s actions to one’s life span and therefore life span was negotiable, while others maintained that death was arbitrary and therefore outside of one’s control.

NOTES The author would like to acknowledge the incisive comments of the editors and of Back Youngsun on earlier drafts of this chapter. 1. Most scholars translate ming as “fate” and adopt a view of it as limited to certain parts of human experience. A representative view is that of Benjamin Schwartz, who said ming comprises “all those aspects of human life over which, in the Confucian view, humans either do not exercise or need not seek to exercise control” (The World of Thought in Ancient China [Cambridge, Mass.: Belknap Press, 1985], 126). 2. See Jia Yanhong 賈艷紅, “Luelun gudai minjiande Simingshen xinyang 略論古代民間的司命神信仰,” Sanming gaodeng zhuanke xuexiao xuebao 20.1 (March 2003): 7–10. 3. See “Jiangling Tianxingguan yihao Chumu 江陵天星觀1號楚墓,” Kaogu xuebao (January 1982). 4. Donald Harper, “Resurrection in Warring States Popular Religion,” Taoist Resources 5.2 (December 1994): 13–28. 5. See Zhouli zhengyi 周禮正義 18.2a. The first two of these deities are identified with the fifth and fourth stars, respectively, of the Wenchang 文昌 asterism. The latter two are identified with the Ji 箕 and Bi 畢 asterisms. See Shiji 史記 27.1293; Sun Xiaochun and Jacob Kistemaker, The Chinese Sky during the Han (Leiden: Brill, 1997.) For one episode in the later career of the “Lord of Wenchang,” see Terry Kleeman, Great Perfection: Religion and Ethnicity in a Chinese Millennial Kingdom (Honolulu: University of Hawai‘i Press, 1998). 6. Compare David Hawkes, The Song of the South (Harmondsworth, U.K.: Penguin, 1985), 110. 7. Wang Liqi 王利器, ed., Fengsu tongyi jiaozhu 風俗通義校注 (Beijing: Zhonghua, 1981), 8:384–385. Another likely Eastern Han text about the Manager of Allotments is the apocryphal text Original Lot Guarantee of the Spring and Autumn Annals (Chunqiu yuanming bao 春秋元命包) quoted in a Tang commentary. A fragment places the Manager of Allotments between two other divine military officials: the “Manager of Income,” who is in charge of rewarding merit and official advancement, and the “Manager of Disasters,” who is in charge of disasters and calamities. The Manager of Allotments is said to be “in charge of aging” (literally, laoyou 老幼 [old age and youth]).” See Shiji 27.1294.

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8. “Luelun gudai minjiande Simingshen xinyang.” 9. Analects 11.23. This passage is cited in the “Quanxue 勸學” chapter of the Lüshi chunqiu 呂氏春秋, where a comment is appended: 顏回之於孔子也 猶曾 參之事父也 古之賢者與 其尊師若此 故師盡智竭道以教 “Yan Hui’s relationship to Kongzi was like Zeng Shen’s service to his father. They were ancient worthies indeed! When a person reveres a teacher like this, the teacher exhausts his wisdom and makes full use of the Way in order to teach that person.” 10. Shiji 67.2188. I spoke with Dr. Anne Hope about Yan Yuan’s symptoms, and she noted that an illness cannot turn already grown hair white but that a shock can turn hair white at the roots, and it can then grow out white. In other words, the white hair implies that Yan’s death was not sudden. 11. Cheng Shude 程樹德, Lunyu jishi 論語集釋 22.759. The graph tong recalls the use of dongxin 動心 in Mengzi 孟子 2A2 and 6B15. On this connection, see P. J. Ivanhoe, “Mengzi’s Conception of Courage,” Dao: A Journal of Comparative Philosophy 5.2 (June 2006): 221–234. 12. Hanshu 56.2526. Yi Yin was minister to the sage king Tang, whereas Lu Shang advised Kings Wen and Wu. 13. In Mengzi 5B13, the periodic rise of the sage kings is described, giving a concrete periodicity to the Xunzi’s view that 遇不遇者 時也 “Whether or not one meets with opportunity is a matter of timeliness.” According to the Mengzi, timeliness means every five hundred years, and this is why Kongzi had 聖之時 “the timeliness of the sage.” 14. Here Zhao is referring to the doctrine of “rectifying names” (zhengming 正名), something that is an important part of governing and is appropriate to the level of talent of a person one level below that of the sage. This reading is unique, but understanding its background tells us how the Mengzi was understood in the Han (Mengzi zhengyi 9.309–312). 15. Xinlun 新論 as quoted in Wenxuan 文選 42. Here, Huan Tan alludes to Analects 5.9. 16. Lunyu jishi 22.757. The phrase 天生德於夫子 “tian gave birth to the virtue in [Kongzi]” is a close paraphrase of Analects 7.23: 天生德於予 桓魋其如予 何 “Heaven gave birth to the virtue in me, so what can Huan Tui do to me?” 17. The relation between Yan Yuan’s untimely death and Kongzi’s failure to become a sage king is explicit in other Han texts, such as the Gongyang 公羊 commentary to the Spring and Autumn Annals, where it is paired with other omens that signal his inability to rule. See Mark Csikszentmihalyi, Readings in Han Chinese Thought (Indianapolis: Hackett, 2006), 79–95. This is also the case for “Suiben xiaoxi 隨本消息,” chap. 9 of Chunqiu fanlu 春秋繁露. 18. Ted Slingerland’s study of the term ming emphasizes the lack of control over a specific area of life, which he characterizes as those forces that lie in the “outer” realm of reality. By contrast, he writes, there is an “internal” arena where self-cultivation is carried out, and the separation of the two serves to encourage self-cultivation even in the face of hardship. This view conforms to what this essay calls the “elite” view, one that sees tian as naturalized. Ted Slingerland, “The Conception of Ming in Early Confucian Thought,” Philosophy East and West 46.4 (October 1996), 567–581.

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19. John Makeham, “Between Chen and Cai: Zhuangzi and the Analects,” in Wandering at Ease in the Zhuangzi, ed. Roger Ames (Albany: State University of New York Press, 1998), 75–100, esp. 80. 20. The “Youzuo 宥坐” chapter of the Xunzi; see Xunzi jijie 荀子集解 20.527 (cf. John Knoblock, Xunxi: A Translation and Study of the Complete Works, v. 3 [Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1994], 249). 21. Functionally, however, both these viewpoints have one thing in common; both assume that ming is something that cannot be known, and so it is effectively arbitrary. None of the early records indicate that sacrifice to ming results in knowledge of one’s life span. Yan Yuan mistakenly predicted he would never leave Kongzi’s side, and Kongzi’s shock at the death, for whatever reason, implies he had no foreknowledge of Yan’s impending death. Therefore, the belief in allotment, under either cosmological scheme, effectively functions therapeutically to prevent people from ascribing reasons for a person’s death other than allotment itself. 22. Mu-chou Poo, “How to Steer through Life: Negotiating Fate in the Daybook,” in The Magnitude of Ming: Command, Allotment, and Fate in Chinese Culture, ed. Christopher Lupke (Honolulu: University of Hawai‘i Press, 2005), 107–125, esp. 123.

EIGHT

DEATH IN THE ZHUANGZI Mind, Nature, and the Art of Forgetting Mark Berkson

It is no exaggeration to say that Zhuangzi, the fourth-century B.C.E. Chinese thinker, possessed one of the most distinctive voices of any writer in history and was one of those rare individuals whose radical, provocative vision causes us to reevaluate our most fundamental beliefs and values. Indeed, certain elements of his thought, especially those regarding death, test the limits of the recognizably human. The book that bears his name is a challenging text filled with fantastic tales, parody, hyperbole, paradox, riddles, and humor.1 Because Zhuangzi is a language skeptic and a perspectivist, he is often maddeningly difficult to pin down. But I believe that his playful slipperiness is driven by a fairly coherent—and often compelling—philosophical picture of the way human beings and the world are, and he presents, in light of these facts, the best way for us to live and die. Many stories within the text depict people facing their own imminent deaths or the deaths of loved ones; other characters muse about death and the proper attitude toward it. Coming to terms with change and mortality is a central aspect of Zhuangzi’s vision, and examining the way in which the philosopher manages the issues of death, dying, and grief can illuminate his overall philosophy. Because Zhuangzi is more of a storyteller than a systematic thinker, themes must often be teased out of his writing. Throughout the text, Zhuangzi seems to prescribe six positions regarding the way we should approach death: (1) avoid harm so that one can live out one’s years;

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(2) accept death—both one’s own and that of others—with equanimity (as one should accept all change); (3) embrace life and death as the essence of the cycle of nature; (4) see that there is no ultimate distinction between life and death and that they form a unity; (5) reject notions that the timing of death is significant and that there is such a thing as “premature death”; and (6) maintain a therapeutic skepticism with regard to the nature of death and post-death existence. There are a number of apparent tensions that arise among these positions. For example, Zhuangzi advocates accepting death yet strives to avoid it; he denies that “premature death” is a problem yet praises those who “live out their years”; he emphasizes naturalness in his understanding of death yet features exemplars whose responses to death appear highly unnatural. In this essay, I argue that these tensions can be reconciled, and I explore the ways in which Zhuangzi’s various positions on death are related to one another. I take the approach that Zhuangzi’s positions on death can be divided into two categories: (1) those that address the transformation of the mind and (2) those that focus on the manifestation of nature. I will examine the manner in which these dual aspects of Zhuangzi’s thought are connected in the text, producing a coherent perspective on how to approach death that illuminates Zhuangzi’s overall philosophy.

TRANSFORMATIONS OF THE MIND Although I divide Zhuangzi’s positions into those that address mind and those that address nature, I do not mean to imply any kind of ontological dualism in his thought. Furthermore, it would be more accurate to speak of “transformations of the heart-mind” in Zhuangzi, as he, like other Chinese thinkers of the time, does not draw firm distinctions between cognitive, affective, and volitional faculties. By “mind,” I mean the ways in which human beings think and feel, the manner in which we understand the world and manage our emotions. Activities that Zhuangzi specifically addresses that would fall under this category include categorizing, conceptualizing, reasoning, planning, intending, judging, and valuing. Zhuangzi believes that human beings are distinct from other animals in that they often perform these activities in an unnatural way. While humans are in part natural beings, manifestations of the Dao (the “Way”) as is all life, they also have tendencies that place them in opposition to the natural Dao. Zhuangzi believes that most—if not all—human suffering is self-inflicted and that changing the manner in which we look at the world allows us to move “freely and easily” through the world. He recognizes that both the prospect of our own deaths and those of loved ones produce fear and grief, which lead to a great amount of avoidable human suffering. Through his writing itself, as well as recommended practices such as sitting in forgetful-

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ness, the fasting of the mind, and immersion in skillful activity, Zhuangzi aims to bring about a new way of looking at and being in the world so as to free human beings from unskillful thinking and debilitating emotions. Skepticism regarding Death One of the most prominent themes encountered in the text, one that is explicitly applied on a number of occasions to the problem of facing death, is skepticism.2 Zhuangzi applies his skepticism to language (i.e., skepticism about the ability of words to convey stable meaning, represent reality, etc.), senses (skepticism about the reliability of our senses and even our ability to know wakefulness from dreaming), and ethics (skepticism about our ability to know right from wrong). As Paul Kjellberg and Philip J. Ivanhoe have pointed out, Zhuangzi’s skepticism is not debilitating; it is not like that of the ancient Greek skeptic Cratylus, who is reduced to complete dysfunction, paralyzed by not knowing since he cannot find any basis on which to act (or not act). Rather, it is therapeutic—it helps to break us of certain habits such as acting on the false certitudes of senses, language, and judgments (e.g., those regarding the badness of death).3 Zhuangzi applies his skepticism to our common assumptions about life and death: “How do I know that loving life is not a delusion? How do I know that in hating death I am not like a man who, having left home in his youth, has forgotten the way back? . . . How do I know that the dead do not wonder why they ever longed for life?” (W42–43).4 Zhuangzi’s skepticism reminds us that we simply do not, and cannot, know what happens after death. He plays on our lack of knowledge by suggesting that, for all we know, death could be a far superior state. In a related passage, Zhuangzi imagines a skull imparting wisdom to the living: “When you’re dead, there’s no ruler above you and no subjects below you. . . . Not even the joys of being a south-facing king can surpass those of death” (170). Zhuangzi goes beyond emphasizing our inability to know what happens after death; after all, the unknown itself can be a cause of great fear.5 After reminding us not to assume that death brings about an unfortunate state, he muses that since death will bring about the end to the problems that plague us in life, it can be seen as a relief. Death is often characterized in the text as a rest following the frenzied activity of life or a relief from life’s accumulated tensions and anxieties, as when Zhuangzi says, “The Great Clod burdens me with form, toils me through life, eases me in old age, rests me in death” (59). Zhuangzi’s sages think of life as “an obstinate wart or a dangling wen, of death as bursting the boil or letting the pus” (G89). These passages, which seem in tension with both those that advocate living out one’s years and those that undermine the very distinction between

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life and death, appear to favor the world of the dead over that of the living. Mori Mikisaburo points out that due to passages such as these, Zhuangzi “was widely interpreted during the period of the Six Dynasties (222–589 CE) as a man who preached a philosophy of death.”6 Such a reading focuses on a small group of passages at the expense of the many passages that “preach” a philosophy of life and those that posit the unity of life and death. The passages that suggest the possibility of death’s superiority are expressions of Zhuangzi’s skepticism, whereby he confronts us with thought-provoking possibilities in order to expose us to the limits of our knowledge and ease the anxieties produced by our minds. Zhuangzi’s sages do not fling themselves at death; rather, they accept life and death equally, each as it comes. Zhuangzi’s is thus a philosophy of acceptance and ease, not one of rushing toward or embracing death. The inadequacy of the “embracing death” interpretation of Zhuangzi was recognized by Guo Xiang (d. 312 C.E.), who argued that “If Zhuangzi rejoiced in death and loathed life, how would he be able to say that life and death are equal? Since he posited life and death as being equal we must be content with life while living and be content with death when dead.”7 The previous passages are examples of Zhuangzi’s therapeutic skepticism, designed to show us why we should not worry about something we know nothing about, something that very well might be preferable to the toils of life. Accepting Death and Going Along with Change As we will see, Zhuangzi places a high value on life, praising those who live out their full life spans. This valuing of life exists alongside his philosophy of accepting death. These positions are reconciled by the fact that life itself, which is a manifestation of the natural Dao, is characterized by ongoing transformation, particularly in the case of life/death cycles. Zhuangzi believes that not only are these two positions not in tension, but that one who values life must accept death as an inseparable dimension of the life he values. In both the Dao De Jing and the Zhuangzi, the Dao—although it may be an “eternal” way (chang dao 常道)—is not a static way. Rather, it is a way of change, of ceaseless transformation. Zhuangzi vividly depicts the changing world: “Decay, growth, fullness and emptiness end and then begin again. . . . The life of things is a gallop, a headlong dash—with every movement they alter, with every moment they shift. What should you do and what should you not do? Everything will change of itself, that is certain!” (103). Embracing change requires that one accept both one’s own death and the deaths of loved ones. Zhuangzi addresses both themes in his writing. One’s Own Death Given that the world is characterized by continuous change, how should one use one’s mind? Zhuangzi advises us to “follow along” with change,

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preserve equanimity, and make the mind “free-flowing.” Zhuangzi’s sages do not become attached to the status quo or some future ideal, and they are not driven by plans. Instead, they act in accordance with life’s ongoing transformations and thus are able to wander freely and easily in the world: Your master happened to come because it was his time, and he happened to leave because things follow along. If you are content with the time and willing to follow along, then grief and joy have no way to enter in. (W48–49) Kongzi said, “Life and death, preservation and loss, failure and success, poverty and wealth . . . [d]ay and night they alternate before us, but human knowledge is incapable of perceiving their source. Therefore, we should not let them disturb our equanimity, nor should we let them enter our numinous treasury. To make the mind placid and free-flowing without letting it be dissipated in gratification . . . [t]his is what I mean by wholeness of one’s abilities.” (47–48) Zhuangzi observes that we experience continuous change in all aspects of our lives; the continuous play of emotions, from sadness to joy to anger, is part of what it is to be human. Emotions are natural, and we cannot—and should not—eliminate them entirely. However, we can nonetheless achieve equanimity within the flux of emotional and sensory experience. This way of being does not demand removing oneself from society or closing off one’s senses, for it is achieved in the midst of activity, what Zhuangzi terms “tranquility in turmoil” (57; Watson’s translation is “peace in strife”; ying ning 攖寧). In such a state, one recognizes and experiences the ongoing transformations of the world, but one is not thrown by or caught up in them. One does not hold onto existing states, does not experience anxiety, and therefore does not exhaust oneself. Rather, one’s mind can simply follow along, in a free-flowing way, the ongoing transformations. This produces inner calm and fluid responsiveness in the midst of change. “Going along with” the transformation of things at its most radical involves accepting severe illness, mutilation, and death.8 Although humans in general try to avoid situations likely to lead to death, Zhuangzi’s exemplars demonstrate the best way to respond to life-threatening developments when they do—as they inevitably will—occur. In one passage, Master Yu suddenly falls ill and becomes deformed yet remains “calm and unconcerned,” expressing only wonder at the new shapes his body is taking. When asked if he resents these changes, he replies: Why no, what would I resent? If the process continues, perhaps in time it’ll transform my left arm into a rooster. In that case I’ll keep

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How are we to describe what happens to Master Yu in this passage? One is tempted to say that he fell victim to a disfiguring disease, that he was ill and became deformed. Yet this passage suggests that these are mere designations, impositions upon the actual reality: Master Yu’s body underwent transformations. He did not experience a “disease” and was not gripped with the fear that would follow from this designation. There is no pathos, no lamentation, and no resistance. Zhuangzi’s sages exemplify acceptance of death, but the word “acceptance” has many shades. Zhuangzi’s sages accept not grudgingly but with equanimity and good humor. There is no sense that they would want things to be otherwise.9 If we are reconciled to continuous transformation in life, including the changes that our bodies undergo, we will be reconciled to death. A. C. Graham writes that “for Zhuangzi, the ultimate test is to be able to look directly at the fact of one’s own physical decomposition without horror, to accept one’s dissolution as part of the universal process of transformation.”10 The acceptance of death, Zhuangzi shows us, depends upon our acceptance of the continuous transformations that we undergo moment by moment.11 The Deaths of Others Grief plays a prominent role in Confucian texts. Confucian thinkers insist that it is a natural human response to feel profound sadness at the death of a loved one. For these philosophers, we mourn because we love. How one grieves reflects both the nature of the relationship to the deceased and one’s own character. Zhuangzi’s perspective is profoundly different. For Zhuangzi, grief and sadness only show that one’s mind is still prey to emotional storms that disturb equanimity and make true freedom impossible. He thus praises Mengsun Cai for abjuring grief, even over the loss of his mother: When Mengsun Cai’s mother died . . . he did not grieve in his heart. . . . In his case, though something may startle his body, it won’t injure his mind. . . . Mengsun alone has awoken. . . . What’s more, we go around telling each other, I do this, I do that—but

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how do we know that this “I” we talk about has any “I” to it? . . . Be content to go along and forget about change and then you can enter the mysterious oneness of Heaven. (W85) Zhuangzi draws an explicit connection between change and the lack of any stable identity or “I.” Those who go along with change rather than attempting to arrest it through the creation of selves or stable identities experience the deaths of others with acceptance and tranquility. For Mengsun Cai, his mother’s death was simply one more moment in the ongoing process of change. Rather than holding onto her, he can let go and therefore suffers no emotional pain. His mind cannot be injured because he has awakened to the nature of transience and its corollary, the absence of any enduring, substantial “self” or “I.”12 In such a state, Mengsun Cai simply “goes along” without grieving or lamentation. Zhuangzi illustrates this point with a dramatic deathbed scene: “Suddenly, Master Lai grew ill. Gasping and wheezing, he lay at the point of death. His wife and children gathered round in a circle and began to cry. Master Li, who had come to ask how he was, said, ‘Shoo! Get back! Don’t disturb the process of change! (81)’ ” The wife and children of the dying man respond in a way that Confucians would argue is perfectly natural— they cry.13 Master Li’s response seems particularly callous, as it denies the loved ones their final chance to be with the dying man. Yet Master Li clearly cares about the dying Master Lai; after all, he was at his bedside. His response can be seen as arising out of concern for Master Lai during his dying experience. Master Lai is going through a process of change, a process to which he must yield. His family, unable to accept this transformation, cries; they are unable to let go with equanimity and therefore will be a disruptive element in Master Lai’s death. Zhuangzi uses a funeral setting to further illustrate the previous point: Master Sang Hu died. Before he was buried, Kongzi heard about it and sent Zigong to assist at the funeral. When Zigong arrived, he found one of Master Sang Hu’s friends composing a tune and the other strumming on a lute. The song they sang together went like this: “Hey-ho, Sang-hu! Hey-ho, Sang-hu! You’ve returned to your true condition [or form], but we go on being human, O!” . . . Zigong returned and asked Kongzi, “What men are these? The decencies of conduct are nothing to them; they treat the very bones of their bodies as outside them. They sing with the corpse right there at their feet and not a change in the look on their faces. I have no words to name them. What men are these?” “They are the sort that

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The Confucian Zigong is one for whom the response of grief and the expression of that grief in ritually appropriate forms are fundamentally human acts. The two men’s singing in the presence of the corpse provokes Zigong’s criticism; the music is an explicit affront to propriety. We can imagine the shocked, bewildered tone in Zigong’s question, “What men are these?” The presence of the corpse seems to demand a measure of solemnity. Zigong, baffled by the actions of the supposed mourners, asks Kongzi what kind of people they are. Kongzi, in his response, refers to two types of “wandering” (you 遊)—wandering within the fang 方 and outside the fang. There are at least two possible ways to understand fang here. The character can refer to a region or area; it can also refer to a prescription or plan for something. The reference in the passage can be to wandering within or outside either “the realm/domain/world” (Mair, Watson) or “the guidelines/structure” (Graham). Thus, there are a number of interpretive possibilities. The latter translation would suggest that the men are outside the bounds of the social structure, of normative behavior, while Kongzi operates within the structure. The former could mean, with a more “transcendent” reading, that they are moved by forces other than the worldly. The passage suggests that the men are able to move beyond conventional understandings of and approaches to life and death. They forget convention and (or perhaps, because) they forget themselves. Kongzi humbly describes himself as one “sentenced by tian 天”; his heavenly endowment, his nature, is that of someone who lives in accordance with “the guidelines.” Yet the portrayal of Confucians here is not critical. They, too, “wander,” and wandering is an activity praised throughout the Inner Chapters. There are, however, different forms of wandering.15 The ideal, for Zhuangzi, is xiao yao you 逍遙遊, “free and easy wandering” or “rambling without a destination,” suggesting a kind of freedom and ease. The character you (wander) is also applied to Kongzi, but the implication is that his ease can only be experienced within the bounds of proper, ritually prescribed behavior. The highest type of wandering, for Zhuangzi, refers to a freedom that goes beyond the limits of socially proper form, including death rituals. A famous passage in the Outer Chapters describes Zhuangzi’s response to the death of his own wife, to whom he was married for quite some time and with whom he raised children. His friend Huizi finds him pounding on a tub and singing, which Huizi finds disturbing. He asks Zhuangzi if that isn’t going too far, and Zhuangzi replies:

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“You’re wrong. When she first died, do you think I didn’t grieve like anyone else? But I looked back to her beginning and the time before she was born. Not only the time before she was born, but the time before she had a body. Not only the time before she had a body, but the time before she had a spirit. In the midst of the jumble of wonder and mystery a change took place and she had a spirit. Another change and she had a body. Another change and she was born. Another change and she’s dead. It’s just like the progression of the four seasons, spring, summer, fall, winter. Now she’s going to lie down peacefully in a vast room. If I were to follow after her bawling and sobbing, it would show that I don’t understand anything about fate. So I stopped.” (W113) As with the Inner Chapters passages, we see an emphasis on the need to accord with change, to accept the transformation of death just as one accepts all of the transformations that produce life. In the aftermath of the death, Zhuangzi employs a larger, “cosmic” perspective that sees the coming to be and the passing away of his wife as manifestations of a larger, ongoing process of coming together and dissolution. It is the fate of everything that takes form to once again change into other forms. Resisting or lamenting any transformation, Zhuangzi tells us, indicates a lack of understanding.16 There is another element present here in addition to accepting change and death—a reference to life and death as natural processes analogous to the changing of the seasons. It is not merely that the process of dying is seen as another transformation in an endless series of changes, but that it is part of an organic process. In fact, the cycle of life and death is the fundamental natural process. Thus, accepting death is not only a matter of accepting change but of according with nature. Zhuangzi’s sages recognize that we are beings created and sustained by natural processes and thus must yield to all natural transformations. The same forces that have brought one into being will lead, inevitably, to one’s death. Accepting and affirming life requires the same attitude toward death. In Zhuangzi’s response, however, we discover a revealing tension in his thought. He replies to Huizi’s critique, saying, “When she first died, do you think I didn’t grieve like anyone else?” He then discusses the transformations of the cosmos that brought her into being and now dissolve her. However, we can imagine the voice of the objecting Confucian: “Look back at your initial reaction. You grieved like everyone else. Isn’t such a response itself natural? Didn’t you have to employ your mind to, as it were, think yourself out of the response? For one who lauds spontaneity as an ideal, you have neglected and overridden your own spontaneous responses, the natural operations of your own being.” David Nivison argues that if Zhuangzi had taken further steps in his thought process, “he would have thought his way

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to the Confucian Dao.”17 A Confucian would argue that if Zhuangzi could see expressing or experiencing grief as natural and fitting rather than based on a misunderstanding of the nature of things or mere conformity with what others do, he would have seen that the ritual expressions of grief are beautiful, for these cultural expressions are “recognized as an aspect of the dao-process just as much as the process of individual life and death.”18 For Confucians, grief is natural.19 For Zhuangzi, as we have seen, prolonged grief is the result of tendencies of the mind that produce disturbance and reveal a misunderstanding about the nature of things and an inability to accept change. No Life and Death—Experiencing Unity In addition to the approach of going along with change, the Zhuangzi is filled with passages that suggest a related way to come to terms with death, to undermine the notion that there even is a duality of “life” and “death.” Zhuangzi calls into question the very concepts of beginning/end and before/after. By deconstructing the temporal distinctions that underlie our conceptions of an absolute beginning (birth) and an absolute ending (death), Zhuangzi points to a realm of no birth and no death; instead, he suggests that there is simply an ongoing series of transformations. Zhuangzi argues that absolute boundaries do not exist in nature. We mistakenly think they exist because we misunderstand how language works, for example thinking that a word such as “birth” or “death” has stability and points to an absolute distinction. However, Zhuangzi explains, “The Way has never known boundaries” (W39). Because the Dao has no absolute boundaries or divisions, the sage does not work with absolute distinctions. The sage does not overlay the conceptions of past and future over his experience of the ongoing flux of time. He recognizes that “past,” “present,” and “future” are simply mental constructions: “Envisioning uniqueness, he could eliminate past and present. Eliminating past and present, he could enter the realm of lifelessness and deathlessness” (57). In each moment, experienced just as it is without reference to past or future, one enters into a realm of “no dying, no being born” (bu si bu sheng 不死不生). Elsewhere, we see that the sage knows “nothing of precedence and sequence” (bu zhi qian hou 不知前後) (340). The experience of the sage, then, is one of unity rather than division. There is the unity of life and death, and also the notion of unity with all things, which is why Zhuangzi’s vision is sometimes described as “mystical.” Since Zhuangzi’s unity is with the Dao and the natural world rather than with a deity or transcendent force, it has been called “nature mysticism.” There are different possible interpretations of what “unity” or “oneness” mean. Generally, throughout the Zhuangzi, these terms can best be

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understood as meaning nonseparation or by using Zhuangzi’s notion of wu jing 無境 (no-boundary). Whereas each being is unique, none is separate from the others; all are connected to the whole, the Dao, in which all things are harmonized and unified. This does not mean that they are all identical, but rather that they all form “one body” with one another.20 Absolute boundaries, categorical separations, are created only in the human mind through concepts (e.g., opposites). Zhuangzi both deconstructs these binary oppositions and gives examples of sages who experience unity (that is, nonseparation) with all other things: The spiritual man is of such integrity that he mingles with the myriad things and becomes one with them (7). Forget all relationships and things; join in the great commonality of boundlessness (99). Thus, the sage realizes that life and death are interdependent aspects that are united within the Dao. No “Premature” Death An implication of this recognition of unity is that “premature death,” or indeed any “untimely” death, is merely a construction based on a particular temporality—that is, narrative temporality—which produces a “desirable” and “undesirable” time to die. In the realm of no-boundary, there is no ultimately good or bad time to die, no early or late, no premature or timely death. The entire notion of “a life” or “a life span” is a creation of the mind (which, as we will see, employs narrative temporality in forging this creation): “Forget how many years there are in a lifespan. . . . If you ramble in the realm of no-boundary, you will reside in the realm of noboundary” (23). When we say someone “lived a long time” or “lived a short time,” we are using our minds to carve out and fix a portion of time and label it “long” or “short.” Once the sage sees past this tendency and is able to accept all transformations as they come, there is no conception of dying at the “wrong time” unless the death is due to human stupidity, in which case it is always the wrong time, no matter how old the person is. As long as the death is the result of natural transformations, there can be no “right” or “wrong” time to die.21 This is an instance where Zhuangzi’s thought differs dramatically from Kongzi’s. For Kongzi, the death of a young person on the path of self-cultivation is fundamentally tragic. For Zhuangzi, the timing of death is irrelevant. The sage readily accepts death whenever it comes and makes no judgments:

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MARK BERKSON The sage delights in early death, he delights in old age. (W77) Although one may have a long life or a premature death, there’s not much difference between them. One might say that it is only a matter of moments. (217; see also 104)

The profound differences between the Confucian and Zhuangzian notions of “premature death” are due to their differing conceptions of temporality. The Confucian notion of temporality sees the human life in terms of narratives. A life unfolds in stages, which are marked by rites of passage (e.g., the “capping ceremony,” marriage, the sixtieth birthday). There are roles, duties, and virtues appropriate to the different stages of life. The narrative conception is the framework against which Confucian notions of cultivation are developed. For Confucians, if death is seen as something to be legitimately feared, it is not because of any existential terror but rather because it represents a potential premature end to the narrative (and thus the loss of any possibility for further self-cultivation and development) and a loss of all possible goods. This is why Kongzi says of his beloved disciple, Yan Hui, who died at a young age, “I watched him making progress, but I did not see him realize his capacity to the full. What a pity!”22 We can contrast the Confucian “narrative” picture with Zhuangzi’s understanding of temporality. According to Zhuangzi, all narratives are based on constructions given to us by society—for example, about the appropriate time to do certain things, about which roles should be occupied when, about what constitutes successful performance, and so on. For Zhuangzi, however, these are overlays constructed on top of, and often obstructing, what is actually there: a ceaseless flow of life that can be experienced in its immediacy at any time. Without a narrative conception, there can be no sense of a life being cut short before the goals are reached or the story is completed. Given that life consists not of stages of development but rather moment-by-moment transformation, the best way to live does not involve cultivation or development; rather, Zhuangzi tells us to just “ride along with things” and let ourselves “wander” rather than progress on a well-formulated path.

DEATH AND NATURE Nature in the Zhuangzi The Zhuangzi’s perspectivism and unsystematic approach, combined with the syncretic nature of the text, mean that convincing cases can be made for multiple readings and interpretations. Some themes in the text, though

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prominent and compelling, have been neglected at times in the interpretations of contemporary scholars. In an article that surveys various interpretations of the Inner Chapters, Bryan Van Norden shows the range of ways in which the text can be understood. These include an “ideal observer view of ethics,” “ethical relativism,” “union mysticism,” “intra-worldly mysticism,” and “skepticism.”23 Many of these describe important aspects of the text. However, a conspicuously absent theme is the significance of nature in the text. This is surprising given that the text is filled with natural imagery, including birds and numerous other animals, trees, bodies of water, and so on. Not only is the role of nature neglected in some recent scholarship, but a number of scholars go out of their way to argue that, for Zhuangzi, nature is exactly what human beings should not be concerned about.24 This leads to occasional tensions and contradictions within their interpretations. For example, Graham writes, “Zhuangzi is interested not in man’s nature but in his Potency,” yet elsewhere he writes, “When ceasing to analyze, simply attending and responding, our behavior belongs with the birth, growth, decay and death of the body among the spontaneous processes generated by Heaven. We are then doing, without knowing how we do it, what Heaven destines for us.”25 Yet what can this process of birth, growth, decay, and death—the “spontaneous processes” that guide our bodies—refer to other than nature? Graham’s acknowledgment here of what guides the actions of a sage calls into question his interpretation that emphasizes “possession” and “transcendence.” I have argued that Zhuangzi aims to undermine Confucian conceptions of self and self-cultivation and thus offers a type of “no-self” picture. I suggest that what guides human beings when the conception of self and all related categories no longer motivate action is nature.26 Unlike the Confucian thinkers Mengzi and Xunzi, Zhuangzi is not explicitly involved with the debate over xing 性 (human nature). In fact, this term never occurs in the Inner Chapters. He did not, as the Confucians did, focus on human nature, on describing the characteristics of our species. His notion of nature can be found at two levels, one on each side of “species”: on the one hand, he emphasizes the unique nature of each living thing; on the other, he talks about nature as that which creates, harmonizes, and connects all life—“Nature” in the larger sense. So, he does not speak so much of human nature except to point out how we tend, as a species, to put ourselves in a state of disharmony from the Dao that leads to all kinds of suffering. While he lauds individual human beings, he does not give much praise to the species as a whole. Although Zhuangzi does not use the character xing, he uses other terminology to describe what we mean by “nature”: (1) tian 天—though often translated as “Heaven,” it is for Zhuangzi not an intervening personal heaven, but rather the impersonal, amoral source of tianli 天理 (the patterns

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found in the natural world), thus better translated as “Nature”; (2) zi ran 自然—that which is “so of itself,” the spontaneous movements associated with nonintentional action; (3) qi suo shou 其所受—“that which is received”; and (4) gu ran 固然—what is “given,” the “inherent structure” of things. Related terms include ming 命 (what is “fated” or “destined”) and wuwei 無為 (effortless or nonintentional action). Although Zhuangzi’s conception of nature is difficult to pin down, by surveying the semantic field we can get an overall sense of what he means and what matters to him. These terms all point to the notion of a given endowment, what we receive from tian. Generally speaking, what is “natural” for Zhuangzi is the set of spontaneous inclinations, tendencies, desires, preferences, and capacities with which each being is born. It is clear from the text that Zhuangzi believes different beings to have different “natures”—he often contrasts the natural tendencies, likes, and dislikes of different beings. For example, “Creatures differ because they have different likes and dislikes. Therefore, the former sages never required the same ability from all creatures or made them do the same thing” (116). The unique nature of each being should be respected and allowed to manifest itself.27 Thus, when we can free ourselves from the domination by “self,” what occurs is the manifestation of our nature. Whereas Mengzi’s picture is “self as realization of nature,” and Xunzi’s “self as reformation of nature,” Zhuangzi’s vision is of the manifestation of nature through forgetting the self. When all things can simply express their natures, they are “harmonized within the framework of nature (he zhi yi tian 和之以天)” (23). Avoiding Harm, Living Out One’s Years, and Nurturing Life One of the prominent themes with regard to death is avoiding harm and “living out one’s [natural] years” (jin nian 盡年, zhong qi tiannian 終其天年), or “fulfilling one’s allotment [or fate]” (ming 命).28 Such notions are grounded in the belief that we must accord with our natural endowment, which includes a particular life span. The Inner Chapters’ portrayals of sages and exemplars show that living well involves avoiding harm, living simply, and living out one’s natural endowment of years. For example, Zhuangzi praises a disfigured man who made his way through the world by doing odd jobs and, because of his “defects,” avoided conscription and thus the danger of war. Zhuangzi explains that “Though his body was scattered, it was sufficient to enable him to support himself and to live out the years allotted to him by heaven” (40).29 In light of subsequent developments regarding longevity and immortality in Daoist religious traditions, it bears noting that in this and related passages there is little if any concern for longevity in the sense of an excep-

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tionally long life. Rather, the text emphasizes living out the years one is given and not cutting one’s life unnecessarily short in pursuit of wealth or power. Life—not longevity—is the priority, and valuing life need not mean valuing longevity, although these two values often accompany each other (particularly in certain forms of religious Daoism and in popular Chinese religion, which prominently features a god of longevity). Keeping in mind the distinction between these values softens the tension between Zhuangzi’s emphasis on “living out one’s years” and his refusal to consider the death of a young person “tragic,” as we saw previously. Zhuangzi’s preference for the simpler, safer life leads him to advocate staying out of harm’s way. A memorable story portrays Zhuangzi’s refusing to accept a government position. When offered a high government position by two officials, Zhuangzi replied: “I have heard that in Chu there is a sacred tortoise that has already been dead for three thousand years. The king stores it in his ancestral temple inside of a hamper wrapped with cloth. Do you think this tortoise would rather be dead and have its bones preserved as objects of veneration or be alive and dragging its tail through the mud?” “It would rather be alive and dragging its tail through the mud,” said the two officials. “Begone!” said Zhuangzi. “I’d rather be dragging my tail in the mud.” (164)30 All living beings naturally value life. Human beings alone, however, get seduced by what Zhuangzi considers unnatural desires, desires produced by the conceptualizing, discriminating mind (e.g., wealth, status, power, fame) rather than by one’s nature. Zhuangzi prefers a simple, carefree life rather than one that involves risk in pursuit of gain. He advises, “Do not be a corpse for fame, do not be a storehouse of schemes” (70). Zhuangzi believes that people are allotted a certain number of years, although they can die unnecessarily before that time is up.31 In some passages, Zhuangzi suggests that not only do sages or “spiritual people” avoid this fate, but that they go beyond this and achieve a certain kind of invulnerability to harm. “Worldly strife leads to chaos. Why should the spiritual person exhaust himself with the affairs of all under heaven? Nothing can harm the spiritual person. He would not be drowned in a flood that surges to heaven, nor would he be burned in a fierce drought that melts minerals and scorches the hills” (7). Here, Zhuangzi dramatically portrays a person who simply cannot be harmed. The theme of the perfected person protected against all of the possible threats and travails of the world recurs throughout the text. While some people (e.g., later Daoists, alchemists) have read these

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as literal descriptions of a superhuman body, Zhuangzi, an expert employer of hyperbole and fantastic imagery to make a point, seems to hold more simply that one lives more smoothly, and is less likely to come to harm, if one lives in accordance with the natural Dao rather than going against its grain in pursuit of unnatural, “ego-based” goals and desires. The safety of the perfect person might not point to any superhuman powers at all. In fact, Zhuangzi elsewhere suggests that it is not that the sage can survive, and therefore takes lightly, the threat of fire or water, but rather that the sage skillfully avoids putting herself in situations in which she would be burned or drowned: She who is clear about contingency will not harm herself with things. She who has ultimate integrity will neither be burned by fire nor drowned in water, will neither be harmed by cold and heat nor injured by bird and beast. This does not mean that she belittles these things, but rather that she examines where she will be safe or in danger. She is tranquil in misfortune or in fortune; she is careful about her comings and goings, so that nothing can harm her. (158) Zhuangzi’s portrayals of remarkable people who cannot be harmed intimate that those who live in accordance with the Dao know how to stay out of harm’s way; they align themselves with the natural flow. Action that emerges from this way of being—action that is natural and spontaneous—is wuwei, a term that can be understood to mean “effortless action.”32 It is action that expresses our nature and thus is the expression of the natural Dao itself. When one lives this way, one enjoys well-being: “The ultimate joy is to keep the person alive, and only through nonaction do we come close to maintaining ultimate joy” (168). Different locutions are used throughout the text to illustrate the “goal”—“preserving one’s essence,” “keeping whole,” and so on. This goal is illustrated in a series of passages involving trees that illustrate the “usefulness of uselessness” (wu yong zhi yong 無用之用). The fundamental insight is that useful trees are cut down and destroyed; trees that are not useful for human exploitation are left to grow and live in peace. “Cinnamon can be eaten, therefore the trees that yield it are chopped down. Varnish can be used, therefore the trees that produce it are hacked. Everybody knows the usefulness of usefulness, but nobody knows the usefulness of uselessness” (41).33 Zhuangzi’s refusing political service addresses the same point: it is dangerous to make oneself available for “use” and exploitation by others. If one can make oneself useless, then one will live out one’s natural life span. This need not mean becoming a recluse, for the way of living advocated

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by Zhuangzi is available to people anywhere (although it is, perhaps, more difficult in some places than in others). The text sometimes moves beyond the focus on taking care of one’s own life to taking care of life in general. The sage not only avoids harming life but also nurtures life (yang sheng 養生), both her own and others’. More accurately, she allows the Dao to nurture and harmonize life.34 Zhuangzi frequently avers a concern with not harming, or nurturing, life and sometimes explicitly links the treatment of other beings and one’s own well-being: “By concentrating his spirit, [the spiritual person] can protect creatures from sickness and plague and make the harvest plentiful” (W27).35 There is a single life-affirming way, and one who accords with it harms neither one’s own life nor the lives of others. This is not the kind of “interventionist” benevolence seen in Confucian texts (which leads Confucians to government service); Zhuangzi believes that, in general, the best way to let things flourish is to do no harm to them, allowing the Dao to take care of things. Natural Cycles of Life and Death The passage describing Zhuangzi’s own deathbed scene which I discuss later, as well as the passage dealing with the death of Zhuangzi’s wife discussed earlier, highlight an awareness of nature’s cycles and our connection with the larger natural world. In the latter passage, Zhuangzi likens the transformations of his wife coming into and out of being with seasonal cycles. The theme of cyclicality is found throughout the text: “Over and over turns the seamless cycle of beginning and ending” (60–61); “Dissolution and generation, fullness and emptiness—whatever ends has a beginning” (158). As we accept the passing from one season to the next, Zhuangzi implies, so we must accept the life and death of a human being.36 Seen in this context, death is understood as a completely natural phenomenon, a fundamental aspect of the Dao: “Life and death are destined. Their constant alternation, like that of day and night, is due to heaven [or natural]” (53). Zhuangzi reminds us that “the myriad things all come out from the wellsprings [of nature] and all reenter the wellsprings” (173). Earlier, we saw Zhuangzi’s emphasis on accepting change, on the need to go along with whatever transformations arise.37 Now, we see an emphasis on accepting the cycles of nature, of seeing the life and death of an individual as fitting into the larger patterns of the Dao. The latter approach suggests that the kind of change is significant, and that the treatment of natural deaths will differ from that of unnatural deaths. This is why there is no contradiction between Zhuangzi’s ideal of living out one’s natural life and avoiding harm on the one hand, and his emphasis on accepting disease and

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death as simply continuing transformations on the other. It is only natural deaths that are to be accepted, not those that are brought about by ambition or greed, which are the products of the mind’s unnatural tendencies.38 The changes that arise in our bodies, those that are due to nature, to “that which creates things” (zao wu zhe 造物者), are viewed quite differently from those that might be wrought by the executioner’s ax. Zhuangzi’s exemplars welcome the natural and avoid the unnatural. The notion of wuwei involves acting when there is nothing else one can do, when one cannot but act; one should only die when one cannot but die. Many of the death-related themes encountered in the Inner Chapters appear in Zhuangzi’s own deathbed story, including the significance of nature, the acceptance of death, and the questioning of traditional norms and values: When Zhuangzi was on the verge of death, his disciples indicated that they wished to give him a sumptuous burial. Zhuangzi said, “I shall have heaven and earth for my inner and outer coffins, the sun and moon for my paired jades, the stars and constellations for my round and irregular pearls, and the myriad things for my mortuary gifts. Won’t the preparations for my burial be quite adequate? What could be added to them?” “We are afraid that the crows and the kites will eat you, master,” said the disciples. Zhuangzi said, “Above, I’d be eaten by the crows and the kites; below, I’d be eaten by mole crickets and ants. Why show your partiality by snatching me away from those and giving me to these?” (332) Zhuangzi’s disciples are driven by a desire to give him a lavish send-off, but Zhuangzi playfully mocks those who put so much emphasis on proper burial accoutrements—the coffin of a certain thickness, jade, and pearls. For these, Zhuangzi substitutes all that surrounds him in the natural world; he will be adorned by heaven and earth, the sun and moon, and the stars. Zhuangzi focuses on the natural world and the heavens rather than on the human beings around him. Humans are grouped, along with all other things, as the “myriad creatures.” Zhuangzi does not emphasize ties to other people (he does not, as Kongzi did on his own deathbed, mention the importance of being surrounded by friends or disciples); rather, he emphasizes fitting into the natural world and the cosmos in a larger sense.39 By asking “What could you add?” Zhuangzi points to the enduring and pervasive human problem: the desire to meddle with things, to adorn and improve, a desire that is not merely unnecessary but often harmful. There is

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complete, peaceful acceptance of natural death. For Zhuangzi, quite unlike the Confucians, dying needs no cultural embellishment. Finally, we see Zhuangzi noting the arbitrary nature of the distinctions that human beings make. Perhaps alluding to Mengzi’s claim that the desire to bury is one that is natural and arises from our sense of love and reverence, Zhuangzi shows that this is just discriminating against one group of animals in favor of another.40

MIND AND NATURE: THE COHERENCE OF ZHUANGZI’S VISION Having seen that Zhuangzi’s positions on death can be divided into two categories, we will now explore the relationship between them and examine the extent to which the tensions between them can be reconciled. One way to understand these two categories is by describing Zhuangzi’s undermining of our usual ways of using our minds as his “negative project” and the resulting way of life, Zhuangzi’s recommended way of living in accordance with nature, as his “positive project.” In order to remove obstructions to the Dao, the mind must be transformed; in passages addressing contemplative techniques, skillful activity, forgetting, and momentary temporality, Zhuangzi shows us the mind and subjective experience of the sage. In regard to death, we see sages who do not grieve, who respond to their own impending death with acceptance and good humor, who experience the unity of life and death. When the transformation of the mind has occurred, the result is the manifestation of nature, which Zhuangzi illustrates through passages on spontaneous action, simple living, harmonizing with nature, and living out one’s years. No-Self Zhuangzi shows that the self is one of the primary obstacles that must be removed in order for harmonization with the Dao to be possible. The characters often associated with what we might translate as “self” (from which come what we might call “ego-centered interests”) in the Zhuangzi include ji 己 and wo 我. According to Zhuangzi, when a person does not have a “self” to defend or build up, he cannot be injured by others’ criticisms, judgments, or insults, and he cannot be moved by flattery or greed: “The whole world could praise Song Rongzi and it wouldn’t make him exert himself; the whole could condemn him and it wouldn’t make him mope. . . . Therefore I say, the Perfect Man has no self (zhi ren wu ji 至人無己); the Holy Man has no merit; the Sage has no fame (wu ming 無名) [literally, no name]” (W26). Zhuangzi describes a sage as one who has “abandoned knowledge and rejected self (qu ji 去己)” (340).41 In addition to being immune from

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insults, one is also freed from the fear of death. If we recognize that we have no enduring self, we have nothing to lose when we die and thus nothing to fear from death. The “self” is something that is constructed by the mind; when all of the concepts and categories used by the mind to label and identify ourselves are gone, the mind itself is clear, “like a mirror.” In such a state, there is no place for the “self ” to reside. How can we rid ourselves of these remarkably ingrained habits of the mind, the concepts and categories that we have internalized over a lifetime? There are different ways in which this can happen. First, one can do it through being exposed, as a listener or reader, to language skillfully designed to move one in certain ways. This is where we find Zhuangzi the magnificent storyteller and master of deconstructive language.42 Zhuangzi also alludes to practices that allow for the forgetting of self—meditative techniques and skillful absorption. The former involves techniques, such as “sitting in forgetfulness” (zuo wang 坐望) and “the fasting of the mind” (xin zhai 心斎), through which we let these mental patterns fall away.43 When one engages in the “fasting of the mind,” one’s very “identity” dissolves. The result, as Yan Hui puts it, is that “there is no more Hui” (W54). Zhuangzi’s way, then, is a way of forgetting. Zhuangzi observes: “Fish forget themselves in the rivers and lakes; people forget themselves in the arts of the Way” (61; see also 48–49). Forgetting in the midst of these practices means that the mirrorlike mind is without the concepts, categories, and achievement-based motivations that society gives us. As one moves through the world, the ability to forget (which does not mean flout or reject) means that one does not identify with and is not bound by social norms and roles, which allows one to either skillfully use or playfully subvert them, thus attaining freedom within the world. Zhuangzi advises, “Forget things, forget heaven, and be called a forgetter of self. The man who has forgotten self may be said to have entered heaven.”44 The contemplative practices and skillful activity described in the text can best be understood with the “momentary model”—when one is able to experience the world as a continuous flow of moment-by-moment transformations, all notions of achievement (including “self,” the ultimate Confucian achievement) disappear.45 As the self depends on narrative, so Zhuangzi’s undermining of narrative temporality with momentary temporality (“no before or after”) has the effect of “deconstructing” the self.46 Tian and Ren A crucial question remains—after we “abandon self,” what motivates our action? Since much of our motivation, desires, hopes, and actions arise out of our conceptions of “self” (the whole notion of acquisition, of what is

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“mine,” is based on this, as are fame, wealth, success, status, etc.), on what basis do we act after the whole notion of self is dissolved? After we “forget” concepts and categories, what is left? It is in answering this question—What is left to guide our actions?— that interpreters of Zhuangzi often differ. While scholars often describe Zhuangzi’s “negative,” undermining project in similar ways, they vary greatly in their understanding of the “positive project.” Scholars such as A. C. Graham, Benjamin Schwartz, and Lee Yearley suggest that Zhuangzi’s sages are moved by “transcendent drives.” Yearley argues that when “transcendent qi energy” is activated, the sage “will be moved by transcendent drives. He will reach a state where Heaven rather than he is the agent.”47 Schwartz focuses on “mysterious powers” that allow for “self-transcendence,” enabling the sage to achieve a “higher gnosis.”48 Graham also ends up with a “transcendence” model: “[The sage’s] motions derive not from himself as man but from Heaven working through him.”49 It is difficult to see where the metaphysical sense of transcendence can be located in a text that lacks the dualism of, say, Platonic or Christian thought.50 It seems, however, that some scholars take the character tian 天, which they translate as “Heaven,” to reflect some radically “other,” transcendent force that “infuses” or “possesses” one. This reading appears to emerge from a particular understanding of a pair of contrasting terms that Zhuangzi frequently employs: tian and ren 人 (human). By examining the distinction between these terms, we can better understand Zhuangzi’s approach to death and dying and illuminate the relationship between mind and nature in the text. For scholars advancing a “transcendence model,” it seems that this contrast between tian and ren shows that the “heavenly” is outside the bounds of the “human,” leading to a model of transcendent forces. I believe that the transcendence model is based on a misreading, for what Zhuangzi is pointing to is the difference between tian—what we get from Heaven, thus what is natural—and ren—the uniquely human, nonnatural tendency of our minds to distort or block the expression of nature. Zhuangzi explains what is meant by tian and what is meant by ren: Horses and oxen have four feet—that is what I mean by tian. Putting a halter on the horse’s head, piercing the ox’s nose—this is what I mean by ren. So I say: do not let what is ren wipe out what is tian; do not let what is purposeful wipe out what is fated; do not let (the desire for) gain lead you after fame. Be cautious, guard it, and do not lose it—that is what I mean by returning to the True. (W104) How can the natural characteristics of a horse be seen as the products of possession by transcendent drives? If, as Zhuangzi says, “tian’s engenderment

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causes things to be unique” (27), it seems immanent, not transcendent. The goal is to accord with our given natures, something that other animals do effortlessly (which is why they are so often exemplars in the text) but humans find difficult. Thus, Zhuangzi says, “He who develops tian benefits life; he who develops ren injures life” (W120). For this reason, I believe that it is more accurate (or at least less misleading) to translate tian as “nature” rather than “heaven” throughout most of the text.51 The realm of ren is the realm of the discriminating, conceptualizing mind. Although humans may be tempted to constantly use this mind to meddle with natural processes, Zhuangzi’s exemplars avoid this problem: “The true man of old knew neither fondness for life nor aversion to death, was neither elated by going forth nor reluctant to return. Casually he went and casually he came. . . . This is what is meant by not detracting from the Way with the mind, not assisting tian with ren” (52).52 The numerous stories of craftsmen illustrate the ideal of following one’s nature, but at the same time they problematize the very idea that nature (tian) can ever be separate from the strictly human (ren). Zhuangzi might have employed more farming and agricultural metaphors as Mengzi did (although even in the case of agriculture, human effort transforms the natural world), but he worked primarily with craftsmanship metaphors (of the kind seen in Xunzi). These craftsmen are working on and shaping the “natural world.” For Zhuangzi, however, the perfected person would be able to do this in such a way that the human “effort” is not an effort at all but an example of wuwei, the expression of nonintentional action and thus the manifestation of nature. Therefore, there is no imposition on nature but rather a harmonization of the nature of the craftsman with the nature of the object being worked on. Cook Ding “goes along with the natural makeup” of the ox (W47); Woodcarver Qing “examines the Heavenly nature of the trees.” This way, he is able to “match up tian with tian”—his nature with the tree’s nature (W127). It is easy to see why many scholars have applied a “transcendence model” of interpretation to the dichotomy of tian and ren. The meaning of ren is “human being” or “person”; something that is “other than” ren, it would seem, must be transcendent, outside the bounds of the human, that is, “heavenly.” If one reads tian as “nature,” as I do, then it seems as if Zhuangzi is saying that the “human” is other than the “natural,” which leads to a problem: If we are natural beings, why aren’t we “being natural” all of the time? Why isn’t my mind, for example, a natural entity (as Mengzi argues it is)? How can we act other than naturally? Zhuangzi seems to imply that when we are simply a manifestation of Dao following what is tian rather than ren, in a sense we are no longer human. Zhuangzi explicitly claims that one can—and should—be without the “essentials of the human being” (ren qing 人情): “Judging ‘that’s it, that’s not’ is what I mean by the ‘essentials of a human being.’ What I mean by being without

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the essentials is that the human being does not inwardly wound his person by likes and dislikes, that he constantly goes by the spontaneous and does not add anything to the process of life” (G82). Whereas the sage is given a particular “human” form by nature, and will therefore always look human and will have certain tendencies given his body and senses, he will lack what most people (certainly Confucians) deem essentially human, such as a mind that makes moral judgments and applies categorical distinctions to the world. While many of the passages in the Zhuangzi emphasize tian over ren, there are other passages that suggest that the human task is to be able to create the proper balance between them. Zhuangzi gives examples of such a balance: In being one, he was acting as a companion of tian. In not being one, he was acting as a companion of ren. When ren and tian do not defeat each other, then we may be said to have the True Man. (W76) To know the actions of tian and to know the actions of ren, that’s the ultimate! He who knows the actions of tian will live in accordance with tian. He who knows the actions of ren can nourish what is unknown to his intellect with what is known to his intellect. Thus he can live out the years allotted to him by tian and not die midway. This is the height of knowledge. (51) The first passage illustrates the human paradox. Insofar as we are natural beings, we are not separated from the rest of the natural world. This “noboundary” situation is what is meant by “being one.” And yet, as human beings, we live among other human beings, as well as the distinctions they create and the categories they use. Thus, if we are to fit properly into the human world, we must use our “essentially human” capacities. Given that the sage’s actions are “born of nature” (tian er sheng ye 天而生也), what role is there left for the distinctly human? Zhuangzi says that the sage uses ren to “nourish what is unknown to his intellect.” What we do without “knowing” or “understanding” is what our nature guides us to do. What Zhuangzi seems to mean here, then, is that in order to accord with our nature in a world of human beings, we must assist our nature with the tool of our minds. Zhuangzi is clear on what aspects of our minds we should not use: If we follow our prejudices and take them as a guide, who will not have such a guide? . . . If one claims that right and wrong exist before they are established in the mind, that is like saying one sets out for Yue today but arrived there yesterday. To do so is to make something out of nothing. (14)

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MARK BERKSON “This” and “that” are mutually dependent; right and wrong are also mutually dependent. For this reason, the sage does not subscribe to [the view of absolute opposites] but sees things in the light of nature, accepting “this” for what it is. (15)

According to Zhuangzi, human beings should not rely on the categorizing or judging functions of the mind and should not be guided primarily by concepts or discursive reason. What aspect of our mind should we use? For Zhuangzi, the mind is useful insofar as it functions practically. We are reminded of the example of Cook Ding’s “sizing things up” before moving on with his carving. The skillful butcher only follows along the natural patterns of the animal, but butchering itself is an activity in the human realm; it involving the use of human-created tools, human customers with their particular demands, and so on. There will be practical problems that present themselves. While the mind will not be concerned with praise or blame, or what it is to be a “good butcher,” it will be concerned with which knife to use for which cut of meat. Whereas, for Zhuangzi, the mind should not be the controller or governor of the person, it certainly does have a role to play. That role is primarily practical and creative—it sees options, works out solutions, entertains possibilities—all under the guidance of qi and in accordance with tian. The result of this combination—following one’s nature and supporting it with the skillful use of, but not complete identification with, the human realm of distinctions—is that one lives out one’s years. The number of years one is given lies in the realm of tian, but inattention to and ignorance of the realm of ren can lead to one’s being cut down midway.53 Insofar as harmonious living often requires Zhuangzian sages to make their way through human society (without ever being truly invested in it or taking it too seriously), they must make skillful use of ren. Because the sage is never fully invested in concepts, categories, and distinctions, he can play with them and, as Zhuangzi delights in illustrating, subvert them. Ultimately, ren-based distinctions are only employed instrumentally, to help the sage make his way through the world smoothly and avoid trouble. The direction of the sage’s wandering, however, is set by the movements of tian: “How insignificant and small is that part of [the sage] which belongs to ren! How grand and great is his singular identification with tian!” (49). The Problem of Grief: Emotions, Naturalness, and Spontaneity The tian/ren distinction can be applied to the realm of emotions. Spontaneity for Zhuangzi does not mean, as it does for some, following the guidance of passions in the absence of the control of the rational mind. While Zhuangzi

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shares with the Romantics the critique of the discriminating, rational mind, he is also suspicious of the waves of powerful emotions that so often carry people away.54 I would argue that the key distinction in understanding which emotions and desires Zhuangzi approves of and which he worries about can be captured by the tian/ren distinction. As pointed out earlier, Zhuangzi believes that each thing’s nature gives it certain likes and dislikes. Our nature will spontaneously lead us in certain directions if we follow it, and the continuous rising and falling of emotions is simply part of our nature: One who attends to one’s own mind and who is not easily diverted by sorrow and joy, realizing their inevitability and accepting them as if they were destiny, has attained the ultimate of integrity. (34) Joy, anger, grief, delight, worry, regret, fickleness, inflexibility, modesty, willfulness, candor, insolence—music from empty holes, springing up in dampness, day and night replacing each other before us, no one knows where they sprout from. Let it be! Let it be! [It is enough that] morning and evening we have them, and they are the means by which we live. (W32–33) These passages demonstrate that for Zhuangzi, grief (or sadness; ai 哀) is an emotion that we recognize as an inevitable part of who we are. He is not saying that we must rid ourselves of all emotions. Rather, we must be able to let them pass without holding onto them so that we can maintain equanimity. Zhuangzi could thus experience the welling up of grief following the death of his wife, and by just “letting it be,” not holding onto it or providing fuel for it (by, e.g., “following after her weeping and moaning”), allow it to quickly pass so that he can see her life and death in a greater perspective. Although we should accept natural emotions, it is the case that many of our emotions and desires are products of (or strongly influenced by) “self” and not “nature”—these are harmful and can actually work against satisfying our natural desires.55 A poem in “Autumn Floods” reads, “Do not destroy the heavenly [or natural] with the human; do not destroy destiny with intentionality” (159). We are given a nature that provides the basic direction of our spontaneous predilections, including emotions. We stifle or act against this at great risk to ourselves. We do not consciously strive to be who we are; we yield to it. It is not, as with the achievement of selfhood in Confucian thought, a type of “self-mastery”—in fact, there is not even self-conscious control involved. There are frequent illustrations of this point in the text. For example, a millipede cannot even explain how he coordinates his numerous feet. He replies, “Now, I just move by my natural inner

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workings but don’t know why it is so” (159). Emotions, therefore, must emerge from our nature and not from our mental categories. Zhuangzi calls this “not detracting from the Way with the mind, not assisting [nature] with the human” (52). We can now make sense of some of Zhuangzi’s passages dealing with emotions in the Inner Chapters. In chapter 3 we meet a man who was the friend of Old Longears, who had recently died. He speaks critically of those who put on a show of crying, who in their hearts “wished not to cry but cried anyway.” Of this forced emotion, which is based not on genuine feeling but on the desire to put on a show for others, the man says, “This is to flee from nature while redoubling human emotion, thus forgetting what we have received from nature. This was what the ancients called ‘the punishment of fleeing from nature’ ” (28). Elsewhere, Zhuangzi states, “If you are impelled by the human, it is easy to be false; if you are impelled by nature, it is hard to be false” (33).56 The result is that while one is not emotionless, one cannot be “thrown” by emotions. Emotions cannot “take one over,” for they are not “multiplied” or “magnified” (bei 倍) by ren. This explains how Zhuangzi can feel grief but is then able to quickly move beyond it. There is a level of equanimity that cannot be shaken, for one simply accepts the comings and goings of emotions. Regarding the death of another, a natural emotion— even when it is an emotion such as grief or sadness—should be accepted but not “multiplied”; by forgetting self, those forces that artificially magnify certain emotions, make them intransigent, or prevent them from dissipating, are dissolved. The emotion is unable to disturb one’s equanimity and quickly passes. Differing Temporalities Revisited Having explored the relationship of “self” and “nature,” we can now turn our attention to how the two different pictures of temporality in Zhuangzi are related. On the one side is the “momentary” model, which is connected with continuous transformation and the “forgetting” of temporal categories (e.g., past and present) in the midst of skillful absorption; on the other, the “natural patterns” model, which is connected with an emphasis on the cyclic expression of nature. While these may be in tension, there is also a sense in which we must employ both notions to understand how nature really unfolds. The natural world, at one and the same time, is characterized by both patterns and continuous change; by the regular and the surprising; by gradual, predictable growth and decline, and explosive, discontinuous disruptions. Although we can recognize patterns, close attention reveals that things never repeat themselves in exactly the same manner.57 One way to understand the presence of both models in the text, then, is that they are both needed to describe the movements of nature.

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At the same time, Zhuangzi draws on one or the other at particular times for soteriological purposes. The picture would look something like this: Zhuangzi believes that we human beings must rid ourselves of the mental tendencies that obstruct our natures. Since these blockages are in the realm of self (and related concepts and categories), they are grounded in an “achievement-oriented” narrative temporality. In order to dissolve this, we must “forget” and “fast.” This can be done through contemplative practices or skillful activity that opens us up to the “momentary” dimension of existence. As we have seen, what emerges when “self”—and other categories, narratives, and conceptual schemes—no longer act as obstructions is the spontaneous manifestation of nature. Essentially, the present-focused momentary experience allows for the unobstructed expression of nature. Pure sensory, embodied experience is our link to the momentary model; the birth, growth, and death of the body can be understood through the natural-cycles model. The former is connected with the theme of accepting dying as simply one more transformation, the latter with accepting life and death as natural cycles.58

CONCLUSION We have seen that Zhuangzi’s positions on death fall into two categories: those that address the operation of the mind (equanimity and acceptance, momentary awareness, recognizing the unity of life and death, forgetting, therapeutic skepticism) and those that focus on nature (living out one’s natural endowment of years, life and death as a natural cycle, following one’s nature through ziran [spontaneous action]). The connection between the two categories can be understood as follows: When one clears the mind of obstructions (the realm of ren), then one’s nature can manifest itself (the realm of tian). The less the mind gets in the way, the more natural one is, which brings one into accordance with the Dao and leads to wuwei (effortless action). This transformation is achieved through the art of forgetting, which is made possible by contemplative practices and skillful absorption. The way of understanding Zhuangzi presented in this essay can help to resolve a tension on which Van Norden has commented: “Puzzlingly, while parts of the Inner Chapters seem to advocate relativism or skepticism, other sections seem to advocate a kind of objectivism.”59 In addition to drawing on the abundant evidence of Zhuangzi’s skepticism and relativism, Van Norden points out areas of the text where Zhuangzi may be advocating objectivism, such as Cook Ding’s following “the way things inherently are.” The tian/ren distinction can account for both dimensions of Zhuangzi’s thought. Zhuangzi’s skepticism and relativism are applied to the realm of ren—the humanly created sphere of concepts, judgments, and language. Their perspectival origins and the inherent limits of any linguistic

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construction mean that we must avoid the error of objectivism vis-à-vis language and its products.60 But where Zhuangzi sounds “objectivist” is when he is referring to a nonlinguistic realm, that of tian and dao; that is, what we have received, our natural endowment. There is a way things are; there is a way to be. This way just cannot be captured in language and ritual forms. Skepticism and relativism with regard to linguistic concepts and categories produces an objectivism at the nonlinguistic level of nature. Humans are uniquely capable of getting in the way of this process in their pursuit of wealth and power, in their emphasis on ren over tian. In so doing, we bring about our own, often unnatural, death; we also cling to our lives and those of our loved ones and are unable to let go at the end. This brings about unnecessary anxiety and suffering. Ironically, we both fear death and hasten it. Zhuangzi aims at avoiding both of these problems. When we can free ourselves from domination by the conceptualizing, categorizing mind, what occurs is the manifestation of our nature, which, through the operation of the Dao, is “harmonized (with all things) within the framework of nature.” We can then live our lives and die our deaths effortlessly and with equanimity.

NOTES 1. There is debate over which parts of the text are the product of the historical Zhuangzi (369?–286? B.C.E.), who is generally considered a “Daoist.” No matter how the current thirty-three-chapter edition of the Zhuangzi was written and assembled, it achieved its present form (edited and with commentary by Guo Xiang) somewhere in the fourth century C.E. So, the text has been around in that form, and continuously influential in myriad ways, for about seventeen centuries. The parts of the text generally considered to most reliably reflect Zhuangzi’s views are known as the “Inner Chapters” (chaps. 1–7). The passages to which I give greatest weight in this essay are the Inner Chapters and those other chapters with points of view that reflect those of the Inner Chapters. For a discussion of my approach to the Zhuangzi, see Mark Berkson, “Death and the Self in Ancient Chinese Thought: A Comparative Perspective” (Ph.D. diss., Stanford University, 1999), xxii–xxv. 2. Zhuangzi’s radical skepticism is exemplified in a humorous and provocative passage in chapter 2, “On the Equality of Things” (see pp. 20–21 of Victor Mair’s translation of the Zhuangzi). 3. See Paul Kjellberg, “Sextus Empiricus, Zhuangzi, and Xunzi on ‘Why Be Skeptical?’ ” in Essays on Skepticism, Relativism, and Ethics in the Zhuangzi, ed. Paul Kjellberg and P. J. Ivanhoe (Albany: State University of New York Press, 1996), 1–25; P. J. Ivanhoe, “Skepticism, Skill, and the Ineffable Tao,” Journal of the American Academy of Religion 61.4 (1993): 639–654. For an analysis of skeptical methods in the Zhuangzi, see Lisa Raphals, “Skeptical Strategies in the Zhuangzi and Theaetetus,” in Kjellberg and Ivanhoe, Essays on Skepticism, Relativism, and Ethics in the Zhuangzi, 26–49.

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4. Unless otherwise noted, all page numbers given for the Zhuangzi refer to Victor Mair’s translation (Zhuangzi, Wandering on the Way: Early Taoist Tales and Parables of Chuang Tzu, trans. Victor Mair [New York: Bantam Books, 1994]). When A. C. Graham’s translation (Zhuangzi, Chuang Tzu: The Inner Chapters, trans. A. C. Graham [Boston: Unwin Paperbacks, 1989]) is used, a “G” will precede the page number; if Burton Watson’s translation (Zhuangzi, Chuang Tzu: Basic Writings, trans. Burton Watson [New York: Columbia University Press, 1964]) is used, a “W” will precede the page number. I strive to use the translations that are most accurate and best reflect the spirit of the original Chinese for each passage. For the sake of consistency, all Chinese terms are presented in pinyin romanization, even when the original translation uses Wade-Giles. 5. I am indebted to P. J. Ivanhoe for this point. 6. Mori Mikisaburo, “Chuang Tzu and Buddhism,” The Eastern Buddhist 5.2 (October 1972): 50. 7. Quoted in Mikisaburo, “Chuang Tzu and Buddhism,” 50. 8. Some passages feature crippled sages who are able to accept the loss of limbs. See, e.g., Zhuangzi, 43. 9. It is well known that acceptance is the final stage of Elisabeth KüblerRoss’s five-stage process of coming to terms with death. However, acceptance as she describes it is quite different from what we encounter in Zhuangzi: “Acceptance should not be mistaken for a happy stage. It is almost void of feelings. It is as if the pain had gone, the struggle is over, and there comes a time for ‘the final rest before the long journey’ as one patient phrased it. . . . [The patient] wishes to be left alone or at least not stirred up by news and problems of the outside world” (Kübler-Ross, On Death and Dying [New York: Macmillan, 1969], 113). Kübler-Ross’s acceptance is akin to resignation or surrender, which is quite different from the humor and wonder seen in Zhuangzi’s exemplars. 10. A. C. Graham, Disputers of the Dao: Philosophical Argument in Ancient China (LaSalle, Ill.: Open Court, 1989), 203. 11. Mark Freeman captures this sentiment: “Could it be that our conviction in our own unity as selves is a defense against our disunity, or a way of grieving over that part of us that dies each and every day?” (“Self as Narrative: The Place of Life History in Studying the Life Span,” in The Self: Definitional and Methodological Issues, ed. Thomas Brinthaupt and Richard Lipka [Albany: State University of New York Press, 1992], 16) 12. For a discussion of the Zhuangzian conception of “no-self,” see Mark Berkson, “Conceptions of Self/No-Self and Modes of Connection: Comparative Soteriological Structures in Classical Chinese Thought,” Journal of Religious Ethics 33.2 (2005): 293–331. 13. Anthropological evidence would seem to support the claim that crying is a natural, universal response to death. The most commonly described and observed behavior among bereaved persons is crying. In a survey of anthropological studies, in seventy-two out of seventy-three cultures, crying played a role in bereavement (in most cultures it was rated as “frequent” or “very frequent”). Given the near universality of crying, the only culture in which crying was not regularly observed, that of the Balinese, warrants closer attention. See Paul Rosenblatt, R. Patricia

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Walsh, and Douglas Jackson, Grief and Mourning in Cross-Cultural Perspective (New York: HRAF Press, 1976), 16ff. 14. This translation is slightly modified using Mair’s choices for certain terms. 15. See Lee Yearley, “Taoist Wandering and the Adventure of Religious Ethics,” William James Lecture, Harvard Divinity Bulletin 24.2 (1995), 11–15. 16. See section V of Amy Olberding’s contribution to this volume. 17. David Nivison, “Hsun Tzu and Chuang Tzu,” in Chinese Texts and Philosophical Contexts, ed. Henry Rosemont (LaSalle, Ill.: Open Court, 1991), 139. 18. Nivison, “Hsun Tzu and Chuang Tzu,” 139. 19. For Mengzi, the ritual forms of mourning that express grief are natural as well, whereas for Xunzi they are artificial; for both, they are profoundly important. 20. Additional metaphors used throughout the text include life and death being “disciples of each other” and constituting “a single cord”; see 46, 212, and 233. 21. This sentiment is echoed by Cicero, who wrote, “Let us get rid of such old wives’ tales as the one that tells us it is tragic to die before one’s time. What ‘time’ is that, I would like to know? Nature is the one who has granted us the loan of our lives, without setting any schedule for repayment. What has one to complain of if she calls in the loan when she will?” (Peter Potter, All About Death [New Canaan, Conn.: William Mulvey, 1988], 231). A contrary view is captured in the words of Zoe Akins, who observes in a Confucian fashion, “Nothing seems so tragic to one who is old as the death of one who is young, and this alone proves that life is a good thing” (Potter, All About Death, 227). 22. Analects 9.21. See Kongzi, Confucius: The Analects, trans. D. C. Lau (New York: Penguin, 1979). 23. Bryan Van Norden, “Competing Interpretations of the Inner Chapters of the Zhuangzi,” Philosophy East and West 46.2 (April 1994). 24. See, e.g., Lee Yearley, “Zhuangzi’s Understanding of Skillfulness and the Ultimate Spiritual State,” in Kjellberg and Ivanhoe, Essays on Skepticism, Relativism, and Ethics in the Zhuangzi, 155, 175. 25. Graham, Disputers of the Dao, 193, 196. 26. This line of interpretation perhaps originates with Guo Xiang, whose interpretation places an emphasis on wuwei, ziran, and xing. He argues that xing represents the nature of particular things; each thing has a particular set of needs, capacities, abilities, and a way it should live. In light of this, each being should simply accord with its nature; doing so is acting “so of itself,” or ziran (spontaneously). When one allows one’s spontaneous inclinations to unfold, one’s actions can be described as wuwei. Guo goes on to argue that zhi (intelligence) leads us away from our nature. Intelligence cannot figure out how we should live and only gets in the way. I have been influenced by a contemporary version of this picture, given by P. J. Ivanhoe, “Was Zhuangzi a Relativist?” in Kjellberg and Ivanhoe, Essays on Skepticism, Relativism, and Ethics in the Zhuangzi, 196–214. 27. See, e.g., Zhuangzi, 159, 171. 28. This aspect of Zhuangzi’s thought may reflect the influence of the philosopher Yang Zhu. Graham speculates that Zhuangzi might have been a member of the School of Yang Zhu at one time. Graham describes Yang Zhu as “the first important Chinese thinker who developed a philosophy for the individual disinclined to join

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in the struggle for wealth and power” (The Book of Lieh-tzu: A Classic of Tao [New York: Columbia University Press, 1990], 135). 29. See also Zhuangzi, 23, 26. 30. See also Zhunagzi, 332. We can see that Zhuangzi values life and would never jeopardize it in order to undertake government service. This distinguishes him in a crucial way from any Confucian. All of the Confucian thinkers speak of the importance of political service, which, they understand, may lead to death. For this reason, courage is an important virtue in the Confucian tradition and conspicuously absent in the work of Zhuangzi. The virtue of courage requires risk; in its highest form, it means risking one’s life for the sake of a good. Mengzi said, “A man of valor never forgets that he may forfeit his head” (3B1; see Mencius, trans. D. C. Lau [New York: Penguin, 1970]). For Zhuangzi (and Yang Zhu), there is no higher good than life, thus no good is worth sacrificing life for. However, nothing in this philosophy necessarily leads to callous egoism. The high value placed on one’s life does not mean that one will not help another person, as long as doing so does not constitute mortal risk. 31. Mengzi, like Zhuangzi, counsels people to avoid dying before their properly fated time: “[O]ne accepts willingly only what is one’s proper destiny. That is why he who understands destiny does not stand under a wall on the verge of collapse” (7A2). 32. For an in-depth discussion of wuwei, see Edward Slingerland, Effortless Action: Wu-Wei as Conceptual Metaphor and Spiritual Ideal in Early China (New York: Oxford University Press, 2003). 33. See also Zhuangzi, 9, 39, 191. 34. This means that Zhuangzi’s way is a way of not harming, which is why Ivanhoe’s choice of “benign” to describe Zhuangzi ethically is a sound one (“Skepticism, Skill and the Ineffable Tao”). There would be a problem with using the term “benevolent” (obviously in its strictly Confucian sense, but even in a wider sense) because there does not seem to be much evidence in the text that Zhuangzi believes people would naturally seek to help one another. The notion of “nurturing life,” however, suggests that using a term stronger than “benign” might be justified. 35. See also Zhuangzi, 96, 222. 36. The “momentary temporality” that refers to going along with momentby-moment transformations (no precedence or sequence, before or after), discussed previously, and the “natural cycles” temporality described here, are not in principle incompatible, but there are tensions between them. These will be addressed in the following. 37. In its most extreme form, this is where we find the “radical Zhuangzi” who would be able, in Lee Yearley’s picture, to move quickly and effortlessly from shock and grief to an aesthetic appreciation of mangled bones and branches following the death of his wife by a falling tree. See Yearley, “The Perfected Person in the Radical Zhuangzi,” in Mair, Experimental Essays on Chuang-tzu, 125–139. 38. Practically speaking, although it is easy to recognize that a death due to execution resulting from political ambition is unnatural for Zhuangzi, it is difficult to determine which diseases result from choices a person makes and which arise “naturally” within the body. Presumably, living in accordance with the Dao will prevent unnatural deaths. The author of one of the Miscellaneous Chapters elaborates on

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this point: “He who is heedless of his nature . . . will find his nature choked with reeds and rushes. . . . [G]radually they eradicate our natures until we erupt in festering pus that breaks out everywhere from tumors and ulcers” (260). 39. It is instructive to contrast Zhuangzi’s deathbed story with Kongzi’s, which is found in Analects 9.12. See Ivanhoe’s contribution to this volume. 40. See Mengzi 3A5. 41. Zhuangzi’s no-self position is not identical with other no-self positions, such as the one found in the Buddhist tradition. Just as there is a range of understandings of “self,” there is also a variety of conceptions of “no-self.” Elsewhere, I have argued that conceptions of no-self differ because they are advanced in opposition to differing conceptions of self. Whereas Buddhist no-self doctrine denies the existence of the atman, Zhuangzian no-self is opposed to the Confucian conception of self (and related notions such as self-cultivation). While important differences exist between these no-self positions, there are also shared features (e.g., an emphasis on transformation and impermanence) that play a part in the Zhuangzian influence on East Asian Buddhism. This Zhuangzian picture influenced the shape that Buddhist “no-self” took in China—the detached awareness that South Asian Buddhism shared with other Indian contemplative traditions was combined with the expression of nature found in Zhuangzi’s thought. In a sense, a new kind of “no-self” emerged in East Asian Buddhism. See Berkson, “Conceptions of Self/No-Self and Modes of Connection.” At times, the picture of Zhuangzi presented in this essay seems to share features with Chan Buddhism. This need not be seen as the result of reading Chan into Zhuangzi. Rather, it results from the fact that the Zhuangzian perspective constitutes a major component of Chan. 42. This is the approach that Robert Allinson emphasizes, pointing out that the Zhuangzi itself is designed to bring about transformation in the reader. See Allinson, Chuang-Tzu for Spiritual Transformation (Albany: State University of New York Press, 1989). 43. There is much debate around the issue of whether there are contemplative or meditative practices in the Zhuangzi. I believe that while the text gives no systematic instructions on any such practices, Zhuangzi assumes and alludes to them. The clearest example is sitting in forgetfulness. For an argument that early Daoist communities were involved with this sort of contemplative exercise, see Harold D. Roth, “Psychology and Self-Cultivation in Early Taoistic Thought,” Harvard Journal of Asiatic Studies 51.2 (1991): 599–650. Judith Berling, in describing Woodcarver Qing’s forgetting of praise, patronage, etc., writes, “He cannot simply say ‘I will no longer think of these things.’ Changing ingrained habits of mind requires discipline, fasting” (Berling, “Self and Whole in Chuang Tzu,” in Individualism and Holism: Studies in Confucian and Taoist Values, ed. Donald Munro [Ann Arbor: Center for Chinese Studies, University of Michigan], 113). Schwartz, who gives a number of examples of what he calls “trancelike mystic experiences,” comments on the notion of “fasting of the mind” (where one waits “in emptiness” and follows the qi): “The procedure recommended seems to involve precisely the kind of ‘emptying of mind’ of all consciousness of the determinate we find in so much literature on ‘meditational’ techniques. Yan Hui, it would appear, is eminently prepared for these instructions” (Benjamin Schwartz, The World of Thought in Ancient China [Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1985], 218). Michael Saso has written about the “meditative use of

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the Zhuangzi among contemporary Daoists on Taiwan” (“The Chuang-Tzu Nei-P’ian: A Taoist Meditation,” in Mair, Experimental Essays on Chuang-tzu, 141). 44. Zhuangzi, The Complete Works of Chuang Tzu, trans. Burton Watson [New York: Columbia University Press, 1964], 133. This can be contrasted with the many important roles that memory plays for Confucians. See Berkson, “Death and the Self in Ancient Chinese Thought,” 283–290. 45. Some scholars have argued that in the skill stories, Zhuangzi shows sages who are absorbed in the “flow state,” a nondual awareness often experienced in the midst of skillful activity, such as a musical or athletic performance. Both Chris Jochim and P. J. Ivanhoe develop this theme. The idea of “flow” originates with the work of Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi (Flow: The Psychology of Optimal Experience [New York: HarperCollins, 1990]). This idea bears resemblance to Abraham Maslow’s notion of “peak experience.” See Ivanhoe, “Skepticism, Skill, and the Inneffable Tao; Chris Jochim, “Just Say ‘No’ to No-Self in Zhuangzi,” in Wandering at Ease in the Zhuangzi, ed. Roger Ames (Albany: State University of New York Press, 1998), 35–74. 46. Mark Freeman writes, “Alongside the attempt to question the orderliness of the process of development, therefore, the very idea of self—as integrated, consistent, and enduring identity—is rendered suspect” (“Self as Narrative,” 16). 47. Yearley, “Zhuangzi’s Understanding of Skillfulness and the Ultimate Spiritual State,” 162. 48. Schwartz, The World of Thought in Ancient China, 234. 49. Graham, Disputers of the Dao, 193. 50. There are other ways to use the notion of “transcendence” that might apply more accurately to Zhuangzi. For example, one could argue that the perfected person is able to transcend conventional categories and language (he is no longer bound by them, no longer sees the world through them). But there is no need to see such a person as motivated or infused by a force that lies completely beyond him. My objection, then, is not to the word “transcendence” per se, but to forms of transcendence that require a strong metaphysical dualism. 51. Zhuangzi’s treatment of tian had a profound influence on Xunzi. Xunzi’s understanding of heaven as an impersonal force, unresponsive to human wishes, which can be seen in the movements of the natural world and the cosmos, is very close to Zhuangzi’s view. This understanding is far closer to what we in the modern West mean by “nature” than the word “heaven,” which partakes too much of the dualistic metaphysics of Christianity and can therefore suggest a notion of “transcendence.” 52. See also Zhangzi, 251. 53. This point is illustrated in Zhuangzi’s “conversion story” (196–197). Being able to move smoothly through the world requires a certain mastery of practical problems and a working knowledge of categories, concepts, and rules. This is what Zhuangzi’s master meant when he advised Zhuangzi, “When in a place where certain customs prevail, follow the rules of that place” (197). 54. See A. C. Graham, “Taoist Spontaneity and the Dichotomy of ‘Is’ and ‘Ought,’ ” in Mair, Experimental Essays on Chuang-tzu, 3–23. 55. The term “natural emotions” (xing qing) is used in the Outer Chapters (see, e.g., Zhuangzi, 150). This distinction is also found, I believe, in the Dao De Jing, which states that the sage is “for the belly, not for the eye” (chap. 12). Certain appetites, such as hunger, are natural; if undistorted, hunger can be satisfied with

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simple food and has natural limits—after a certain point, we are full. Other forms of desire—e.g., lust for power, wealth, or status—are products of socialization and have no natural limit. The greedy are never satisfied, even with enormous wealth. This is why following natural desires leads to satisfaction and contentment, while being led by human-created desires leads to anxiety and suffering. 56. See Zhuangzi, 321 for a discussion of “true” vs. “forced” emotion. 57. This understanding of nature is beautifully described by David Abram, who writes, “The patterns on the stream’s surface as it ripples over the rocks, or on the bark of an elm tree, or in a cluster of weeds, are all composed of repetitive figures that never exactly repeat themselves, of iterated shapes to which our senses may attune themselves even while the gradual drift and metamorphosis of those shapes draws our awareness in unexpected and unpredictable directions” (The Spell of the Sensuous [New York: Vintage Books, 1996], 64). 58. The body plays a central role in both temporalities. The awareness of sensuous, embodied experience links us to the momentary dimension of existence; our natural bodily rhythms are manifestations of nature (they are given us by tian) and thus link us with the natural cycles model. My understanding of Zhuangzi is in stark contrast with that of scholars such as Lao Siguang and Judith Berling, who have an explicit or implicit dualism between “spirit” and “body” and argue that Zhuangzi has a notion of a “true self” that is separate from the body. Lao writes, “The self does not take the physical form as its ‘own body.’ . . . The self is a subject transcending the (material) series of events; thus, life and death of the physical form ‘cannot change the self’ ” (quoted in Jochim, “Just Say ‘No’ to No-Self in Zhuangzi,” 41). Berling writes that “spirit is that core of consciousness not tied down by the physical self” (“Self and Whole in Chuang Tzu,” 112). However, she also writes, “The openness of the Daoist is not openness to the pressures of society, but to what comes naturally from living” (”Self and Whole in Chuang Tzu,” 116). Natural living is, if it is anything, embodied, physical living. It makes sense, then, that the term Zhuangzi uses to describe that aspect of the person that should be “cultivated” (xiu 修), “preserved” (bao 保), and “nourished” (yang 養) is shen 身, which frequently refers simply to the “body.” This is a point made by Jochim, who observes that for Zhuangzi “it is almost always a bad idea to lose or forget one’s shen, and the same goes for putting it in danger or taking it lightly” (“Just Say ‘No’ to No-Self in Zhuangzi,” 47). Our bodies are what we receive from tian; it is through embodied experience freed from the control of the judging (“good” and “bad”), categorizing mind that we can accord with the Dao. 59. Van Norden, “Competing Interpretations of the Inner Chapters of the Zhuangzi,” 8. 60. See Mark Berkson, “Language: The Guest of Reality,” in Kjellberg and Ivanhoe, Essays on Skepticism, Relativism, and Ethics in the Zhuangzi, 97–126.

NINE

SAGES, THE PAST, AND THE DEAD Death in the Huainanzi Michael Puett

Early China was a haunted world. Ghosts were pervasive and dangerous, and the living regularly performed sacrifices in an attempt to control or mollify the dead. Often, the sacrifices were insufficient. Within this context, the Huainanzi offers a unique and powerful argument concerning death. The focus of the discussion here will be the text’s presentation of sages—how they deal with death and teach nonsages to handle the same. I will focus on chapters 7 and chapter 13, and between these two we will get a fascinating glimpse of some of the complexities concerning visions of death in early China. To ground this analysis, I will begin with a brief discussion of views about death during the Warring States and Western Han periods.

DOMESTICATING THE DEAD: VIEWS OF DEATH IN EARLY CHINA In early China, the body of a living human was believed to contain several elements, including different souls and energies. Some of these energies were believed to be of heavenly origin; others were from the earth. At death, the former would float up to their ultimate abode in the skies while the latter would remain on or enter into the earth.1 In many of the texts from the Warring States and Han periods, the elements from the heavens were the spirits (shen) and hun souls, whereas the elements from the earth included the bones, flesh, and po souls.2 225

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According to early Chinese beliefs, these souls and energies are released from the body when one dies. This could be highly dangerous for the living. Some of the demonic forces—which would then simply be called ghosts (gui)—would tend to haunt the living.3 Harboring jealousies and resentments, they would be drawn to where they once lived and would send down disasters and misfortunes on their living family members. Indeed, this was believed to be the origin of many of the demonic illnesses that the living suffer. In an attempt to prevent these dangers, rituals and sacrifices would be used to move the various souls and energies into places where they could be controlled, contained, and transformed into forces that would at least cause less harm to the living and potentially even be beneficial to them. Immediately following a person’s death, someone would recall the various souls that would have floated away after the death of the body. They would be called back to the corpse, which would then be placed, with its souls, into a tomb. In the tomb would also be placed various objects that the person had enjoyed while alive—foods, material goods, and texts. Since the souls contain the personality of the person, the hope was that, surrounded by objects that they had enjoyed while living, they would be likely to stay in the tomb and not harm living people. Exhortations would also be placed in the tomb stating that, since the souls are now dead, they should remain in the tomb and never again return aboveground.4 The living would then periodically hold feasts in the outer chambers of the tomb, in an attempt to maintain the familial feelings that the souls once possessed. A separate set of rituals would be employed for the spirits, which by then would have floated into the heavens. The goal of these rituals was to transform the capricious but powerful spirits into ancestors who the living hoped would work on their behalf. The spirits would be given ancestral names and ancestral tablets, as well as a place in the ancestral cult based upon their lineage position. Sacrifices to them would then be provided in order to keep them in place within that ancestral lineage. The spirits would be called upon to act as ancestors—to see the living as their descendants and to give the living blessings as a parent would give blessings to his or her children. Thus, the descendants present themselves as following the paths laid out by the deceased, who are now explicitly called ancestors and who are then in turn called upon to support the living as their descendants. If these rituals work, they result in some of the remains of what were once humans being kept safely in a tomb rather than turning into ghosts to haunt the living, and they would also result in the spirits’ being transformed into ancestors who would then send down blessings to the living as their descendants. This set of rituals was crucial for other reasons as well. Other spirits in the world, from the spirits of the mountains and rivers to the high gods

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in the heavens, also tended to be highly capricious, and sacrifices were used in an effort to domesticate them as well. The ancestors, who tended to be more pliable by sacrifices, could also be called upon to mollify the higher spirits and attempt to gain their support. Frequently, however, the rituals would not work. Ghosts would still haunt the living, and spirits would still send down harm and misfortune upon the living as well. Thus, the rituals were a never-ending attempt to keep the ghosts and spirits at bay. And for brief periods of time, such rituals might even be successful—but usually not for very long.

VISIONS OF DEATH IN THE HUAINANZI The world of the Huainanzi is filled with ghosts and spirits, as was China at the time. The ghosts appearing in the text, at least, emerged from the same processes as seen in the dominant religious views of the day: “When people die, they become ghosts.”5 Spirits of nature, as we will see later, are pervasive as well. Moreover, gaining the blessings of the ghosts and spirits is crucial in the text. To quote from a Huainanzi passage that will be discussed in more detail further on: “If one fits with affairs of the world, obtains the patterns of man, accords with Heaven and Earth, and receives blessings from the ghosts and spirits, then one can govern” (“Fanlun,” 13/121/26–27). Chapter 13 argues that gaining the support of ghosts and spirits is necessary for a ruler. However, there are significant differences between these views and those found in the practices of the day. To begin, and in direct contrast with the views that underlie common religious practices, the ghosts and spirits in the Huainanzi do not appear to be capricious. As John Major has pointed out: “Strangely lacking in this pantheon are malevolent gods and deities of the underworld.”6 I would add that the same lack of malevolence exists among the celestial spirits as well. Absent, in other words, are the dangerous ghosts and spirits who need to be mollified and coerced through offerings or transformed through sacrifice into ancestors. Moreover, in the world of the Huainanzi, the ghosts and spirits do not even eat the sacrifices given to them. Thus, the primary means used in religious practices of the time to gain the support of the ghosts and spirits is consistently ruled out throughout the Huainanzi. As chapter 18 bluntly states, performing sacrifices is “not to seek blessings from the ghosts and spirits” (“Renjian,” 18/189/8). So, then, why does one perform the sacrifices, and how does one gain the blessings of the ghosts and spirits if sacrifice does not do so? In other words, what sort of a relationship is the text positing among humans, ghosts, and spirits?

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To begin to answer these questions, I would like to begin with a discussion of chapter 7 of the Huainanzi and then move on to chapter 13.

SAGES AND DEATH As do many of the texts of the day, “Jingshen,” chapter 7 of the Huainanzi, posits humans as having received different elements of the self from Heaven and Earth.7 When death occurs, each of these elements returns to its origin: “[T]he essence and the spirit are possessions of Heaven, whereas bones and limbs are possessions of Earth. When the essence and the spirit enter their gate, and when bones and limbs return to their root, how can ‘I’ exist?” (“Jingshen,” 7/54/27–28) However, the text takes this view in a direction quite different from what one sees elsewhere. Since the elements that make up a human come from Heaven and Earth, the sage is called upon to take Heaven and Earth as his father and mother, respectively: “He takes Heaven as his father, Earth as his mother, yin and yang as his regulators, and the four seasons as his principles. Heaven is still by means of purity; Earth is settled by means of pacifying. As for the myriad things, if they lose these, they die; if they take these as their model, they live” (“Jingshen,” 7/55/1–2). Moreover, since the sage models himself on the larger cosmos, he does not focus on the particular thing that is his current self. As the chapter argues, building upon images from the “Inner Chapters” of the Zhuangzi: Heaven and Earth revolve and penetrate each other. The myriad things are collected and become One. If you are able to understand the One, then there is not one thing that is not understood; if you are not able to understand the One, then there is not one thing that can be understood. It is like my being placed within this world. I am also one thing. I do not know if all under Heaven takes me as completing its things. Moreover, if there were no “me,” would everything be complete? As such, I am a thing: a thing like other things, a thing in relation to other things. How am I to be compared with other things? And how did my birth add anything, and how will my death be a loss? Now, the producer of transformations made me into a clod; I do not have any means to oppose it. (“Jingshen,” 7/56/11–15) With this, the chapter is clearly building upon a generally Zhuangzian vision, one in which the sage takes life and death as equal and sees himself as part of the larger transformations of the cosmos. These themes, in fact, appear in a number of the chapters. Chapter 16 argues: “Thus, sages see life and death as equal, and fools also see life and death as equal. Sages see life

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and death as equal because of the patterns of allotment, whereas fools see life and death as equal because they do not understand where benefit and harm lie” (“Shuoshan,” 16/164/5–6). The sage takes life and death as equal not in the sense of failing to understand wherein lies danger, but rather because he understands the larger patterns of the cosmos. As such, the sage is unconcerned by the processes of life and death: Thus, the sage uses nothing to respond to something and always traces out their patterns. [He] uses emptiness to receive fullness and necessarily exhausts their modulation. . . . The hun and the po souls are positioned in their abodes; the essence and spirit are held fast to their root. Death and life are not altered by him. Therefore, he is called: the ultimate spirit. (“Jingshen,” 7/57/6–8) For the sage, then, the hun and po do not seek to leave the body early, nor do they crave life after death. Thus, the processes of life and death are not altered by the sage. Similar claims appear also in the anecdote that opens chapter 16: The po asked the hun: “What is the structure of the Way?” The hun responded: “It takes nothing as its structure.” The po asked: “Does nothing have a form?” The hun responded: “It does not have anything.” The po asked: “How can one obtain and hear nothing?” The hun said: “One encounters it directly. If you look at it, it has no form; if you listen to it, it has no sound. It can be called the ‘obscure darkness.’ The ‘obscure darkness’ is how one refers to it, but it is not the Way.” The po said: “I have obtained it.” He thereupon turned back to himself and looked inwardly. The hun said: “In general, for those who obtain the Way, their form cannot be seen, the name cannot be grasped. Now, you still have a form and a name. How are you capable of the Way?” The po said: “What use are words? I will return to my ancestor.” The po turned back to look, but the hun suddenly could not be seen. The po turned back to his own existence, and then he also submerged himself in the formless. (“Shuoshan,” 16/154/3–9) If the hun and po take the Way, rather than a specific individual, as their structure, then their concern is not with longevity but rather with becoming a part of the larger cosmos. But if much of this reads like a lengthy elaboration of themes from the Zhuangzi, allow me to return to the end of the last quotation given from chapter 7: “Therefore, he is called: the ultimate spirit” (“Jingshen,” 7/57/8). As I have argued elsewhere, such self-divinization claims are pervasive in the

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Huainanzi, and they play a particularly significant role in chapter 7.8 The adept, by modeling himself on the cosmos, is able not simply to accord with it but also to take control of things within it—a concern quite removed from anything one finds in the Zhuangzi. The chapter goes on to assert that one can ascend to even higher levels than sage, become a True Man, and reach a point of being able to “employ ghosts and spirits” (“Jingshen,” 7/58/1). One actually gains direct power over ghosts and spirits—not by trying to coerce them with rituals but by being more refined than them and thus being able to control them directly. Returning to the sage, the cosmology of chapter 7 has further implications. If the sage views Heaven and Earth as his father and mother, he is unconcerned with his human father and mother—and thus with the entire system of ancestral worship, of transforming the deceased into ancestors, of placing oneself within a lineage structure, and so on. And if the hun and po souls truly return to nothingness, they would not become ghosts. In other words, not only would the sage not be concerned about his deceased human ancestors, but his remains would also not become ghosts to threaten the next generation. In short, the sage is completely autonomous, in every way, from the dominant forms of practice in early China for dealing with the dead. Indeed, the sage is autonomous from quite literally all human customs: “Thus, the sage models himself on Heaven and follows the circumstances. He does not adhere to custom; he is not seduced by men” (“Jingshen,” 7/54/28–7/55/1). As Griet Vankeerberghen has beautifully argued, such claims about the complete autonomy of the sage from custom, ritual, and precedent are pervasive throughout the Huainanzi.9 Most humans, of course, are not sages. Most do not take Heaven and Earth as their father and mother, and most follow the human customs into which they were born. The souls of most humans do not turn to nothingness but rather become ghosts, and the next generations then follow the sacrificial practices of the day to deal with those ghosts. As we have already seen, several of the Huainanzi chapters not only accept that the vast majority of people will perform these sacrifices but even argue that nonsages should perform the sacrifices. So, what about nonsages? If it is the case that, through self-cultivation, the sage can become autonomous from the concerns of humans about death, and can even prevent himself from becoming a ghost after death, then what about all of those humans who are not sages? And, why should they continue to perform sacrifices that the sages have transcended? To answer these questions, I will turn next to chapter 13, “Fanlun,”—a chapter that focuses on the sages, but specifically what the sages do with nonsages.

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A WORLD MADE BY SAGES Just as in chapter 7, the sage in chapter 13 models himself on the larger cosmos, is fully autonomous from human custom, and is unconcerned with the human dead as well as with the human past. But, unlike chapter 7, chapter 13 is directly concerned with how sages deal with the rest of humanity. One of the crucial arguments of chapter 13 is that the world of humans (and thus much of the rest of the world as well) is a product of the creations of human sages: “Sages create standards, and the myriad things are formed within them” (“Fanlun,” 13/122/15). It is sages who create the world within which the myriad things live. To demonstrate this point, the chapter opens with a narrative of how the inventions of the sages took nonsagely humans from a world in which they lived in caves, had no clothing, and barely had enough food to survive to one in which they had all they needed to live and thrive.10 One of the keys to this celebration of innovation is that sages must be fully free from following the standards of the past so that they can be allowed to create anew whenever necessary. Now, the Yin replaced the Xia; the Zhou replaced the Yin; the Spring and Autumn period replaced the Zhou. The rites of the three dynasties were not the same. Why should antiquity be followed? Great men create, and disciples transmit. If you understand whence standards and order arise, then you can respond to the times and change. If you do not understand the origin of standards and order, you end up in disorder even if you accord with antiquity. The standards and edicts of the current age should change with the times; the rites and propriety should be altered with customs. (“Fanlun,” 13/122/20–22) Indeed, the text sees innovation as the key for dynastic change as well, as the previous three dynasties fell because the rulers were overly beholden to precedent, and each succeeding dynasty arose because the founding rulers were willing to innovate: Placing a state in order has a constant: taking the benefit of the people as a basis. Correcting education has an alignment: putting commands into practice is most important. If one investigates benefiting the people, one does not necessarily imitate the ancients. If one investigates activities, one does not necessarily accord with the old. Now, as for the decline of the Xia and Shang: they did not change their standards, and they were destroyed. That the

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MICHAEL PUETT three dynasties arose is due to their ruling without imitating their predecessors. Thus, sages set standards with the changes of time and set rites with the transformations of customs. Their clothes and utensils were each determined according to their function; the standards, the measures, the regulations, and the commands accorded with what was appropriate. Therefore, to change from the ancients is not something that can be opposed, and to accord with customs is not something that one should strive to do often. (“Fanlun,” 13/121/3–6)

Both standards and rituals, therefore, must be changed with the times, and sages must be allowed to create when necessary. History is thus driven by the inventions of the sages, who are themselves defined as completely autonomous from the customs that previous sages created. All of humanity lives within the world created by sages, and the sages, to continue this process of inventing as necessary, are always free from that world. In other words, unlike a vision of history in which one is continuing the path laid out by one’s forebears (the normative vision emphasized in the ancestral cult), the Huainanzi chapter emphasizes a vision in which the sages are always free to create anew. With rituals in particular, therefore, sages are again the creators, and they are fully autonomous from the rituals created by previous sages. Indeed, many of our rituals are simply the product of things that occurred in the past, but the sages should never be regulated by such precedents: Duke Zhao of Lu had a nurse whom he loved. When she died, he had a cap of silk made on her behalf. Thus, there came to be mourning clothes for nurses. The lord of Yang killed the lord of Liao and took his wife. Thus, there came to be the ritual of excusing women from great feasts. When the regulations of the former kings were not appropriate, they were discarded; in the activities of the later ages, if they were good, they were promoted. This is why the rites and music have not yet begun to have constancy. Therefore, the sages instituted rites and music; they were not regulated by them. (“Fanlun,” 13/121/1–3) Rituals hold the practitioners within them and restrict practitioners’ actions. Sages, by definition, are outside of rituals, following the Way rather than precedent: The people regulated by the standards cannot plan far ahead; the men held by the rituals cannot respond to changes. An ear that does not pick up the distinction between clear and distorted can-

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not order pitches and notes; a heart that does not understand the distance between order and disorder cannot impose regulations and standards. It is necessary to hear clearly and see clearly, for only then is one capable of acting in accord with the Way. (“Fanlun,” 13/122/15–18) Given such concerns, one of the central issues in the chapter is how a sage can assess (lun) what to do, when to innovate, when to follow past practices, and so on. If no standard from the past can be assumed to be applicable to the present, then how can one know when and what to create? The basis is the “Way”: Therefore, that which the sage follows is called the “Way”; what he does is “activities.” The Way is like metal and stone [musical] instruments: once tuned, they do not change. Activities are like the qin and se: they need to be re-tuned continuously. Therefore, standards, regulations, rituals, and propriety are the instruments for governance, but not the means by which to govern. Thus, humaneness constitutes the warp, propriety constitutes the weft; this does not change in ten thousand generations. It is like the fact that one can test the abilities of the people and study the ways they can be used even though daily there are changes. Does all under Heaven have unchanging standards? If one fits with affairs of the world, obtains the patterns of man, accords with Heaven and Earth, and receives blessings from the ghosts and spirits, then one can govern. (“Fanlun,” 13/121/24–27) Concretely, then, following the Way means fitting with the affairs of the world, understanding the patterns of the populace, and according with Heaven and Earth. However, the list also indicates that one receives blessings from ghosts and spirits. Ghosts, as well as spirits, do exist, and rulers do indeed need their blessings. Yet how does one receive such blessings? The chapter is not explicit, but the answer would appear to be that the ghosts and spirits respond to the harmony generated by the proper ordering of the sages. In other words, all of these issues on the list are interrelated: the blessing of the ghosts and spirits occurs as one accords with Heaven and Earth, fits the times, and understands the patterns of humans. In short, the sage does not follow precedent or past standards but instead follows the larger cosmic order: As for the qi of Heaven and Earth, none is as grand as harmony. Harmony is the interchange of yin and yang, the distinction of day

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MICHAEL PUETT and night, and the generating of things. In the period of spring things are born, and in that of autumn they are completed; they need to obtain the essence of harmony. Therefore, the way of the sages is lenient yet firm, strict yet kind, pliant yet upright, forceful yet humane. Too much hardness leads to inflexibility; too much softness leads to laxity. The sage properly resides between hardness and softness and thereby obtains the root of the Way. If one accumulates yin, one will sink; if one accumulates yang, one will rise. When yin and yang join, they are thereby able to complete harmony. (“Fanlun,” 13/122/29–13/123/2)

As in chapter 7, the sages’ reliance on the larger cosmos renders him autonomous from the demands of custom and precedent. But why do the sages create rituals to regulate the nonsages? And, more particularly for the concerns of this essay, why do they create rituals for the dead? When the chapter first turns to ancestral rituals, it emphasizes the point we might expect—that ancestral rituals have been changed throughout history: In the time of the Xia, the tablet for the deceased was placed above the eastern steps; the Yin placed it between two pillars; the Zhou placed it above the western steps. The rites were not the same. Shun used earthen coffins; the Xia encircled them with stonework; the Yin used double coffins; the Zhou built a partition and arranged feathers upon it. These burial practices were not the same. The Xia sacrificed at night; the Yin sacrificed during the day; the Zhou sacrificed at dawn. These sacrifices were not the same. (“Fanlun,” 13/120/20–23.) The chapter also emphasizes that different figures have disagreed on the proper ancestral rites: Singing to lutes and dancing to drums so as to make music; turning, bestowing, diminishing, yielding so as to practice the rites; having lavish burials and lengthy mourning so as to send off the dead: these were established by Kongzi, but Mozi opposed them. Universal love, honoring the worthy, esteeming ghosts, opposing fatalism: these were established by Mozi, but Yangzi opposed them. Keeping one’s nature intact, protecting the authentic, not allowing things to entangle the form: these were established by Yangzi, but Mencius opposed them. In urging and rejecting, people differ, and each has an understanding mind. Thus, right and wrong have

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their proper conditions. If you obtain the proper conditions, then there is no “wrong”; if you lose the proper conditions, there is no “right.” (“Fanlun,” 13/123/20–23) Here we arrive at a crucial question. Yes, sacrificial rites have changed throughout history, and yes, immediately preceding figures have offered differing interpretations regarding proper mourning rituals. But throughout all of the changes that the chapter documents, no sage seems to have said that humans ought not practice sacrificial rituals at all. The only question is whether, for example, the sacrifices should be given during the day, during the night, or at dawn. So yes, the rituals are changed with the times; thus, as far as death is concerned, mourning rituals are changed as well. But, why were rituals for the dead created in the first place? As do so many other chapters, chapter 13 denies that sacrifices are actually eaten by ghosts and spirits, so the means that was used at the time to win the favor of deceased and divine powers is ruled out as an effective method. But, and also as stated in other chapters, this does not mean that the sacrifices should not be undertaken: The present age sacrifices to the well and stove, the gate and door, the basket and broom, the mortar and pestle, not because one takes their spirits as being capable of eating the sacrifices. One relies and depends on their power so that difficulties and bitterness will be stopped, and therefore one sees their power at the proper time. This is the means by which one does not forget their merit. (“Fanlun,” 13/131/6–7) The examples here are telling. These are the tools and instruments associated with obtaining water, cooking food, and establishing households. All of these are associated with the crucial inventions of the sages to enable humans to live better, more productive lives. People sacrifice to these items not because their spirits can eat the sacrifices, but because doing so reiterates the crucial advantages that these objects bring to human activities. This is true of sacrifices to natural objects as well: It rams stones together and expels them, then spreads them out thinly and pulls them back together; within a morning it can cover all under Heaven with rain: this is Mount Tai. Though the earth be reddened for three years, they do not cease flowing; they moisten for a hundred miles and yet still can water the grasses and trees: these are the Yangzi and Yellow Rivers. This is why the Son of Heaven ranks them and sacrifices to them. (“Fanlun,” 13/131/7–9)

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Sacrifices, whether given commonly or by the Son of Heaven, are meant to emphasize—both to the practitioner and to other humans—the power of those objects. The same is true of sacrifices to the deceased. These are performed not to coerce dangerous ghosts but rather to emphasize to the living the significance of those who have undertaken meritorious deeds: Therefore, if a horse has saved people from trouble, after it dies, people will bury it, using a screen as a shroud. If an ox has merit with humans, after it dies, people will bury it, using the sideboard of a great chariot as its burial mat. If oxen and horses that have merit cannot be forgotten, then how much more so with humans! This is the means by which the sages reiterate humaneness and inherit kindness. Therefore: Yandi created fire; when he died, he became the God of the Stove. Yu labored under Heaven; when he died, he became the God of the Soil. Houji created sowing and reaping; when he died, he became the God of the Grains. Yi ridded all under Heaven from harm; when he died, he became the God of the Ancestral Temple. This is the means by which ghosts and spirits were established. (“Fanlun,” 13/131/9–13) The consequence of this argument is that the pantheon of gods sacrificed to by humanity is a product of the sages’ work. Natural forces that are significant for humanity, as well as deceased sages who produced significant inventions for humanity, are made into gods—not because the former are capricious spirits who can be coerced through offerings, and not because the latter became dangerous ghosts who needed to be controlled through sacrifice, but rather because making them into gods allows the sages to control those sorts of behaviors that cannot be controlled through written rules and texts: Therefore, they rely on ghosts and spirits in order to make admonishments. With all of these, none could be successfully made manifest in documents, tablets, bamboo, and silk and stored in temples and archives. Therefore, they use portents and omens to make it clear. The foolish do not understand the dangers. [The sages] thereby borrow the awesomeness of ghosts and spirits in order to give voice to their teachings. (“Fanlun,” 13/131/2–3) As we have seen, the claim that the pantheon of gods was composed of deceased humans and the spirits of natural forces would not have been surprising at the time. What would have been surprising is that neither is presented as capricious or dangerous, and that the reason the sacrifices are

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helpful is not that they coerce the capricious ghosts and spirits but rather that they help guide human behavior in ways that bring about harmony in the world—and thus the blessings of ghosts and spirits. What would have been even more surprising is the claim that the sages are outside of this process. The sages created the rituals, but they themselves are not bound by them at all: sages are able to connect with ghosts and spirits through self-cultivation, not through sacrifice. They created the pantheon of popular religion as a means of celebrating themselves and training the populace in ways that would otherwise not be possible. In short, chapter 13 is arguing that the entire world of humans is an ongoing creation of the sages. Thus, the rituals for dealing with the dead, including sacrifices, were created by the sages in order to direct the activities of nonsagely humans in ways that would lead to an orderly and harmonious world. Previous sages, therefore, are made into spirits who will then be sacrificed to by the latter-born, and the material objects invented by those sages, along with significant natural forces, will become the object of sacrifice as well. As in the world of popular religion, in the text the pantheon of deceased humans and natural powers is domesticated, constructed, and maintained by humans. But in the “Fanlun” chapter of the Huainanzi, it is not sacrifices that so domesticate the powers; instead, it is the sages who name them, rank them, and create the sacrifices for them—but all in order simply to direct the activities of the populace. There is no concern here with transforming the dangerous ghosts of the deceased or with coercing the capricious powers of the spirits.

SAGES, GHOSTS, AND SPIRITS I have argued elsewhere that the cosmology of several of the chapters of the Huainanzi (along with several other texts dating from the late Warring States and early Han periods) represents a reversal of that found in the dominant religious practices of the day.11 In those practices, the assumption was that nature was a highly perilous and fragmented world controlled by dangerous ghosts and capricious spirits. Thus, the goal was to use sacrifices and ritual to transform and domesticate such powers into a pantheon that people hoped would act on their behalf. In several chapters of the Huainanzi, the aim is to recognize that, on the contrary, the world is a monistic cosmos generated by the One, which should therefore be considered the ancestor of everything. The goal is not to domesticate the recently deceased and the local spirits into a more unified pantheon but rather to cultivate oneself to become ever closer to the One. However, here I would like to underline that this is true only for the sages—as well as for those such as the True Man who are even more refined

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than the sages. For the humans beneath the sages, however, the “Fanlun” chapter of the Huainanzi explicitly argues that the religious practices of the day were in fact created by the sages simply to control their behavior. In one sense, then, a generally Zhuangzian vision is being appropriated to assert a radical idea of sagehood in which the sage is fully autonomous from precedent and from norms derived from history and culture. In chapter 7, one also finds an assertion of a generally Zhuangzian vision of death in which the sage comes to view himself as part of a larger cosmos and thus does not fear his own particular death. Yet several chapters—chapter 13 being a particularly striking example—take this strong vision of sagehood in a counterintuitive way. The sage in chapter 13 is defined as a creator, the creator of the worlds in which the myriad things grow and develop. The sages are thus the creators of customs and precedents that completely regulate the life of the nonsages. Included therein are the mortuary rituals and the pantheon of ghosts and spirits to which nonsages sacrifice. In terms of death, this results in a two-tiered approach. The nonsages fear their own deaths, fear the ghosts of those already dead, and follow the precedents and customs of the past. In short, they live in a haunted world. In contrast, the sages do not fear death, do not become ghosts or fear those who have died previously, and are fully autonomous from the customs and precedents of the past. Although the sages are also surrounded by ghosts and spirits, they live in a distinctly unhaunted world.

GHOSTS IN EARLY CHINA Having discussed the arguments from chapters 7 and 13 of the Huainanzi, it may be helpful to place these arguments in the larger debates of the time concerning death, ghosts, and sagehood. As mentioned previously, the dominant religious practices of early China were focused on dealing with a world of capricious and potentially malevolent ghosts and spirits. The practices, therefore, involved endless sacrifices, exorcisms, and divinations. Many of our received texts from early China, however, take a distancing position from these practices. One of the ultimately (although not immediately) influential visions was developed by the Mohists. The Mozi argues that ghosts do exist and do act in the world, but they are not capricious at all. On the contrary, the cosmos is fully moral and indeed was created by Heaven, a moral deity. The ghosts who populate the world are organized by Heaven into a hierarchy to dispense justice in the world, rewarding the good and punishing the bad. The goal of human sages was thus to clarify the moral order instituted and maintained by Heaven and the ghosts:

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Therefore, in ancient times the sage kings made manifest and understood what Heaven and the ghosts bless and avoid what Heaven and the ghosts detest so as to increase the benefits of all under Heaven and eradicate the harms of all under Heaven. This is why Heaven made coldness and heat, placed the four seasons in rhythm, and modulated the yin and yang, the rain and dew. At the proper time the five grains ripened and the six animals prospered. Diseases, disasters, sorrows, plagues, inauspiciousness, and hunger did not arrive.12 Indeed, Heaven, a moral deity, created the cosmos itself in order to benefit humanity and supervise human behavior through rewarding the good and punishing the bad: Moreover, there are ways that I [Mozi] know Heaven loves the people deeply. It shaped and made the sun, moon, stars, and constellations so as to illuminate and guide them [i.e., the people]. It formed and made the four seasons, spring, autumn, winter, and summer, so as to weave them into order. It sent down thunder, snow, frost, rain, and dew so as to make the five grains, hemp, and silk grow and prosper, and sent the people to obtain materials and benefit from them. It arranged and made mountains, streams, gorges, and valleys, and [it] distributed and bestowed the hundred affairs so as to oversee and supervise the goodness and badness of the people. It made kings, dukes, and lords and charged them with, first, rewarding the worthy and punishing the wicked, and, second, with plundering the metals, wood, birds, and beasts and working the five grains, hemp, and silk so as to make the materials for people’s clothing and food.13 Sacrifices, therefore, are not an attempt to coerce or mollify capricious spirits. Instead, sacrifices were instituted by the sages to clarify the wishes of Heaven and the ghosts and to teach humanity obeisance to these higher powers: Therefore, if it were like this, then Heaven would send down cold and heat without moderation, snow, frost, rain, and dew at the improper time; the five grains would not grow; and the six animals would not prosper. . . . Therefore, in ancient times, the sage kings clarified what Heaven and the ghosts desire and avoided what Heaven and the ghosts detest. They thereby sought to increase the benefits of all under Heaven and push away the problems of all under Heaven. They thereby led the myriad peoples under Heaven to purify themselves, bathe, and make libations and offerings to sacrifice to Heaven and the ghosts.14

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The ruler, as well as the populace, does need to gain the support of Heaven and the ghosts but does so through proper behavior, not through coercing the spirits through sacrifice.15 This vision of sages as having instituted sacrifices to Heaven and the ghosts in order to transform the behavior of humanity was also used in the sacrifice chapters of the Book of Rites (Liji).16 In these chapters, the capricious and potentially malevolent nature of the ghosts and spirits is downplayed as well, but not out of a claim that ghosts and spirits are, contrary to common belief, part of a moral, regularized hierarchy of divine powers. The goal instead is to shift the focus to the effect of rituals on their practitioners. The argument is that humans should sacrifice to ghosts and spirits, as well as (if one is a ruler) Heaven and Earth, but not in order to coerce or manipulate ghosts, nor to teach humans to obey the will of a moral Heaven and set of ghosts. Instead, the purpose was to transform the dispositions of the practitioners, teaching them to respect that from which they arose, to accept proper hierarchy, and to have proper feelings toward one another. For example, the “Jiyi” chapter argues that “ghosts” and “spirits” are the names given to the earthly soul (po) and vital energy (qi) of the deceased, respectively: Zai Wo said: “I have heard the names ‘ghosts’ and ‘spirits,’ but I do not know what they mean.” The Master said: “Qi is the flourishing of spirit; the earthly soul (po) is the flourishing of the ghost. . . . Everything that is born will die. When one dies, one returns to the ground. This was called the ‘ghost.’ The bones and flesh wither below; hidden, they become the earth of the fields. Their qi is sent out above; it becomes radiant brightness. According with the essence of things, instituting the pivot of action, [the sages] clearly named ‘ghosts’ and ‘spirits,’ taking them as a pattern for the black-haired people. The populace was thereby awed, and the myriad people thereby submitted.”17 Morever, these terms, and the entire system of ancestral worship, were created by the sages in order to bring order to the populace: The sages took this as still insufficient, so they constructed dwellings and houses and set up temples and ancestral halls. They thereby differentiated closer and more distant kinship, and closer and farther removed in terms of descent. [The sages] taught the people to turn to the past and look back to the beginning, no longer forgetting where they came from. The populace submitted to this and therefore obeyed with greater urgency.18

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Sacrifices to the ghosts and spirits were then established to improve the behavior of those still alive: When these two ends were established, they responded with two rituals. They set up the morning service, burning fat and manifesting it with the radiance of [burning] southernwood. They thereby responded to the qi. This taught the populace to return to the beginning. They offered millet and rice and served liver, lungs, head, and heart, presenting them and separating them into two bowls, and supplementing them with sacrificial wine. They thereby responded to the earthly souls (po). This taught the people to love one another and taught superiors and inferiors to utilize their dispositions. This was the utmost of ritual.19 In many ways, the arguments of these chapters are closer to the practices of the day than the Mohist arguments: instead of claiming that the world of Heaven and ghosts is already arrayed in a moral hierarchy, the emphasis here is on the claim that the rituals are transformative in shifting ghosts into ancestors. As in popular practice, but very much unlike the theory of the Mohists, the hierarchy of the divine world is a product of human ritual. Unlike popular practice, however, the emphasis here is less on using sacrifice to transform ghosts into (hopefully) supportive ancestors and more on refining the dispositions of the human participants such that they think of ghosts as ancestors and thus come to appreciate the importance of hierarchy and the past. Unlike the Mohist chapters, which strongly assert that ghosts and spirits do exist, the sacrifice chapters of the Book of Rites say little about the ontological status of those things the sages deemed “ghosts” and “spirits.” The hope would presumably be that all participants in the rituals (including, therefore, the recipients of the sacrifices) would come to think in filial terms—with the ghosts’ truly acting toward the descendants as ancestors should (i.e., giving benefit, not harm), just as the living would be filial toward the ghosts. Some passages seem to imply that this is indeed the case. The “Biao ji” chapter, for example, emphasizes that sacrifice results in a proper ordering of both the ghosts and the living: “The Master said, ‘As for the sacrificial victims, ritual, and music being properly arranged and flourishing, this is the means by which there is no harm from the ghosts and spirits and no resentment from the hundred families.’ ”20 However, the primary focus of the chapters is less on the recipients of the sacrifice and much more on altering the dispositions of the living participants. All of these arguments in the sacrifice chapters of the Book of Rites concerning the degree to which the entire world of ancestral sacrifice was a

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creation of sages to bring order to humanity are very similar to the claims in chapter 13 of the Huainanzi. But there is a significant difference with many of the Huainanzi chapters. If the sacrifice chapters of the Book of Rites are relatively uninterested in focusing on the recipients of sacrifice, this is not true of the Huainanzi chapters: the Huainanzi chapters do assert that the cosmos is ruled by spirits, and it is filled with ghosts as well (even though the ghosts are notably nonmalevolent). This is crucial since—building on the previously mentioned self-divinization literature—several chapters argue that humans can, through self-cultivation, gain many of the same powers as spirits, can become spirits themselves, and can ultimately even become more powerful than the spirits. Like the Mozi, then, the Huainanzi chapters do assert that ghosts and spirits exist and that they indeed organized the cosmos. Also like the Mozi, ghosts and spirits are not capricious creatures that one must try to coerce through sacrifices and divination. And, again, like the Mozi, a ruler must gain the support of the ghosts and spirits in order to rule effectively; this is done through proper action, not through coercive sacrifices. Sacrifices are defended, but not because they coerce and transform capricious spirits, but rather because they help to inculcate proper behavior. Thus, although the text opposes the nonsagely view of ghosts and spirits (that they are capricious creatures one must try to coerce through sacrifices and divination), the text does assert that they exist, that a sage’s harmonious rule gains their support, and that a True Man can in fact control the ghosts directly. The key here, though, is that sages (and anyone who cultivates himself beyond the level of sage, into becoming a True Man) do not seem to become ghosts because their souls return to nothing. Thus, the ghosts are the dead of nonsagely humans who continue to haunt the nonsagely living, while the sages are fully autonomous from this world of ghosts—both in the sense that they do not themselves become ghosts after death and in the sense that they are not haunted by the past deeds of humanity. The sages, then, live in a world very comparable to that seen in the self-divinization literature: a world of autonomy from both the precedents and rules of humanity and the caprices of the ghosts and spirits. They follow the patterns of the cosmos, but they do so spontaneously. For the rest of humanity, however, the sages create mortuary rituals directly comparable to those seen in the sacrifice chapters of the Book of Rites. And, for the nonsages, the world they live in is very much one like that described by the Mohists: a world filled with ghosts and spirits, but not capricious ones, to whom humans are called upon to undertake constant rituals and sacrifices. This debate that we have sketched concerning sages, ghosts, and the nature of the cosmos indicates the significant weight given to concerns about death and ghosts in early China. Most religious practices of the day were concerned with ghosts as well as other potentially malevolent spirits,

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and the various positions sketched here are involved with defining humans in relation to these practices—the Mohist concern with claiming that such ghosts are, contrary to common views, part of a moral pantheon created and organized by a benevolent deity; the concern in the Book of Rites with transforming the relationship of the living to the ghosts; the concern in the self-divinization literature with attaining autonomy from the world of ghosts; and the concern in the Huainanzi chapters with embracing portions of all these positions. All of these arguments, however, are made against a background defined by the absolute pervasiveness of the religious practice of the day—practices concerned with pacifying the capricious and highly dangerous ghosts of the dead. The question for all of these texts, then, is what attitude one should take toward such practices.

HISTORY The chapters from the Huainanzi under discussion here posit a bifurcated cosmology in which the sages practice self-cultivation techniques to gain full autonomy from the world of humans while also creating rituals and regulations to organize the rest of humanity. Historically, such a vision would come to have great significance. The Huainanzi was, of course, an imperial text. It was commissioned by Liu An, the uncle of Han Wudi, and certainly supported the maintenance of a powerful empire ruled by the Liu clan. As we know, Liu An’s vision for the empire ultimately failed to win the day. Han Wudi went on to build a highly centralized empire under a very different set of claims, and Liu An himself was charged with treason. Later, at the end of the Western Han, the vision of the Book of Rites became crucial at court, and the text would be designated as one of the Five Classics. The Huainanzi was, to say the least, out of favor in imperial circles. The vision seen in the Huainanzi accordingly came to be seen as, in a sense, a road not taken by the empire. As such, the vision would eventually be appropriated—with significant changes of course—by later movements hoping to make a claim for building a different type of empire than the one that ultimately came to dominate the Han. A possible example of this was the Celestial Masters, a movement that began in the second century C.E. and would ultimately become a major influence on later Daoist movements.21 One of the texts associated with the Celestial Masters, the Xiang’er commentary to the Laozi, probably written in the second century C.E.,22 makes a very comparable argument in which the population should continue to perform sacrifices to ghosts while the sages should instead focus on selfcultivation, refining the spirits within their body, and ultimately working to achieve transcendence.23

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Intriguingly, however, the Xiang’er commentary roots this bifurcated world within a cosmology directly reminiscent of the Mohists’: the cosmos is ruled by a moral deity (called “the Way” by the Xiang’er, “Heaven” by the Mohists) who created the cosmos in general and who presides over a moral pantheon in which Heaven and the spirits reward the good and punish the bad. Indeed, death itself was established by the Way as a punishment to those who fail to follow its precepts. Those who do follow the precepts of the Way, on the contrary, are rewarded with long life:24 The Way established life in order to reward the good and established death in order to punish the bad. As for death, this is what all men fear. The transcendent rulers and nobles, like the common people, know fear of death and enjoyment of life; it is what they practice that is different. . . . Although the common people fear death, they do not try to trust in the Way, and they enjoy committing bad acts. Is it surprising that they are not yet trying to escape from death? The transcendent nobles fear death, trust in the Way, and hold fast to the precepts. Therefore, they join with life.25 Those who do follow the admonitions of the Way will behave properly and will also undertake practices of self-divinization very comparable to those found in texts such as the Huainanzi—they will accumulate essences, complete spirits, and thereby live long: Humans should only preserve their bodies; they should not love their bodies. What does this mean? By maintaining the admonitions of the Way, we accumulate goodness and complete accomplishments; accumulate essences and complete spirits. When spirits are completed, the transcendents live long. This is why we treasure our bodies.26 For the Xiang’er, then, death is associated with losing the Way, and those who instead follow the precepts of the Way can become transcendent nobles and live long. Since they turn away from the world of death, they also turn away from the world of sacrifices to the dead: “Those who practice the Way live; those who lose the Way die. The correct method of Heaven does not reside in sacrificing, praying, and offering. The Way therefore forbade sacrifices, prayers, and offerings.”27 The rest of humanity, however, will use their essences not to complete spirits but rather to reproduce. Since the Way needs more humans—some of whom will follow the precepts and complete spirits—it accepts that this is necessary. These people, of course, will die, and the Way accepts that ancestral sacrifices will need to be performed for them. In fact, it was actu-

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ally the Way that created ancestral sacrifices for those who will not become transcendent nobles: Now this [copulating to reproduce] produces great calamities. Why did the Way create (zao) it? The Way values ancestral sacrifices and values that the species does not end. It desires that humans join their essences and generate life; therefore, [the Way] teaches it. . . . However, humans with utmost power . . . are able to not unite and produce life. From a young age they stop this [i.e., the losing of their essences through copulation], and they are able to complete good spirits earlier. These are called the essences of the Way. Thus, Heaven and Earth have no sacrifices, dragons no offspring, transcendents no wives, the Jade Maiden no husband.28 Such an argument is a fascinating blend of many of the positions previously outlined. Like the Huainanzi, the Xiang’er commentary makes a distinction between the majority of people, who perform ancestral sacrifices to the dead and then in turn die themselves, and those who instead practice techniques of cultivating spirits and thus transcend both death and the world of ancestral sacrifices. But unlike the Huainanzi’s celebration of the autonomy of those who so transcend the world of death, the Xiang’er instead asserts a cosmology directly reminiscent of the Mohists’, in which the Way becomes—like Heaven for the Mohists—a deity who governs the cosmos, rewarding the good and punishing the bad. Indeed, for the Xiang’er, it was the Way itself—not human sages—that created ancestral sacrifices. And for those hoping to transcend the world of death, the path was to follow the precepts of the Way, thus completing the spirits that would help the Way to bring harmony to the cosmos. Thus, for the Xiang’er, it was a moral deity that created the type of social hierarchy seen in the Huainanzi chapters: the Way called upon the sages to cultivate the spirits within them, but they did so in order to generate spirits that would then help to bring harmony to the cosmos. Ultimately, these practitioners could achieve immortality while the remainder of the populace would continue to form families, procreate, die, and become ghosts for which their descendants would perform ancestral sacrifices. Such a claim concerning a moral deity overseeing both the cosmos and all humans within it dramatically limits the types of autonomy supported in self-divinization texts such as the Huainanzi and instead asserts the forms of hierarchy seen so strongly among the Mohists. Here, we see yet another example of the endless permutations that will recur in these attempts by movements in early and early medieval China to define themselves in relationship to current religious practices—in the case at hand, supporting arguments comparable to those in the Huainanzi concerning the importance of a group of people

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asserting autonomy from the world of death and ancestral sacrifice but then also appealing to a cosmology comparable to the Mohists’ in order to restrict the degree of autonomy such figures themselves would be allowed to exercise. In short, what one sees in the Huainanzi chapters under discussion is the beginning of something that will become very common in later Daoist movements, with Daoist practitioners seeking autonomy from the religious practices of the rest of the populace—most of which will continue to be devoted to pacifying, coercing, and manipulating the ghosts of the deceased. But the ultimate cosmology of these early Daoist movements will involve an assertion of a creator deity and a moral bureaucracy directly reminiscent of the Mohists’, instead of the claims of autonomy characteristic of the Huainanzi.

CONCLUSION In the haunted world of early China, one approach was to transform ghosts into beneficial (one hoped) ancestors. Another was to claim that ghosts are, on the contrary, embedded in a moral pantheon that rewards the good and punishes the bad. Yet another approach was to seek to step outside such a process altogether—not worship ghosts, not become a ghost oneself—and instead seek some form of self-divinization. What is particularly fascinating about the Huainanzi chapters under discussion here is that they attempted to assert portions of each of these positions—to have a world of nonsages undertaking sacrifices to (relatively nonmalevolent) ghosts and also a world of sages (as well as those even more refined) claiming full autonomy from such sacrifices. If such a system was never to win the day at the Han court, a version of it would later become highly important among the Celestial Masters and thereafter among numerous self-proclaimed Daoist movements that would also connect to this vision a hierarchical cosmology highly reminiscent of the Mohists’ position. Ghosts, in short, were so pervasive in early China that one either endlessly performed rituals to control them, endlessly attempted to embed them in larger moral pantheons, or endlessly worked instead to gain full autonomy from the world they haunted. A substantial portion of the cultural, intellectual, and religious history of early and early medieval China can be written in terms of these permutations on the never-ending attempts to deal with the world of ghosts.

NOTES 1. For notions of death in early China, see Mu-chou Poo, In Search of Personal Welfare: A View of Ancient Chinese Religion (Albany: State University of New York Press, 1998); Constance A. Cook, Death in Ancient China: The Tale of One Man’s

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Journey (Leiden: Brill, 2006); Anna Seidel, “Traces of Han Religion in Funeral Texts Found in Tombs,” in Do¯ kyo¯ to shu¯kyo¯ bunka, ed. Akitsuki Kan’ei (Tokyo: Hirakawa, 1987): 21–57; Michael Puett, “The Offering of Food and the Creation of Order: The Practice of Sacrifice in Early China,” in Of Tripod and Palate: Food, Politics, and Religion in Traditional China, ed. Roel Sterckx (New York: Palgrave MacMillan, 2005), 75–95; Puett, “Human and Divine Kingship in Early China: Comparative Reflections,” in Divine Kingship in the Ancient World, ed. Nicole Brisch (Chicago: Oriental Institute of the University of Chicago, 2008), 199–212. 2. Ying-Shih Yu, “ ‘O Soul, Come Back!’ A Study in the Changing Conceptions of the Soul and Afterlife in Pre-Buddhist China,” Harvard Journal of Asiatic Studies 47.2 (1987): 363–395. K. E. Brashier has argued that, contrary to the textual tradition, both the hun and po were seen as normatively residing in the tomb while only the spirit would float to the heavens. See his outstanding article, “Han Thanatology and the Division of ‘Souls,’ ” Early China 21 (1996): 125–158. 3. On ghosts in early China, see Mu-chou Poo, “The Concept of Ghost in Ancient Chinese Religion,” in Religion and Chinese Society, ed. John Lagerwey (Hong Kong: Chinese University Press, 2004), 173–191; Poo, “Imperial Order and Local Variation: The Culture of Ghost in Early Imperial China,” Acta Orientalia 56 (2003): 295–308. 4. Seidel, “Traces of Han Religion in Funeral Texts Found in Tombs.” 5. Huainanzi, Chinese University of Hong Kong, Institute of Chinese Studies, Ancient Chinese Text Concordance Series (Hong Kong: Commercial Press, 1992), “Dixing,” 4/34/26 (hereafter, most citations of this text will appear in parentheses within the current text). Here and throughout, my translations have been aided by those given in The Huainanzi: A Guide to the Theory and Practice of Government in Early Han China, by John S. Major, Sarah A. Queen, Harold D. Roth, and Andrew Meyer, with additional contributions by Michael Puett and Judson Murray (forthcoming). My overall understanding of the Huainanzi has been helped greatly by Judson Murray, “The Way and the Sage in Early Han Thought: Cosmology, Self Cultivation, and Rulership in the Huainanzi” (Ph.D. diss., Brown University, 2007); Griet Vankeerbergen, The Huainanzi and Liu An’s Claim to Moral Authority (Albany: State University of New York Press, 2001); Sarah A. Queen, “Inventories of the Past: Rethinking the ‘School’ Affiliation of the Huainanzi,” Asia Major, 3rd ser., 14.1 (2001): 51–72; Judson Murray, “A Study of ‘Yaolue,’ ‘A Summary of the Essentials’: Understanding the Huainanzi from the Point of View of the Author of the Postface,” Early China 29 (2004): 45–108. 6. John Major, Heaven and Earth in Early Han Thought: Chapters Three, Four, and Five of the Huainanzi (Albany: State University of New York Press, 1993), 48. 7. My overall understanding of chapter 7 of the Huainanzi has been aided greatly by Harold Roth, “Psychology and Self-Cultivation in Early Taoistic Thought,” Harvard Journal of Asiatic Studies 51.2 (1991): 599–650. 8. Michael Puett, To Become a God: Cosmology, Sacrifice, and Self-Divinization in Early China (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Asia Center, 2002), 259–286. 9. Griet Vankeerbergen, The Huainanzi and Liu An’s Claim to Moral Authority (Albany: State University of New York Press, 2001). 10. Michael Puett, The Ambivalence of Creation: Debates concerning Innovation and Artifice in Early China (Stanford, Calif.: Stanford University Press, 2001),

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159–166; Puett, “The Belatedness of the Present: Debates over Antiquity during the Han Dynasty,” forthcoming in Perceptions of Antiquity in China’s Civilization, ed. Dieter Kuhn and Helga Stahl. 11. Puett, To Become a God, 145–200, 259–286, 317–319. 12. Mozi, “Tianzhi, zhong,” Sibu beiyao ed., 7.6a–b. 13. Mozi, “Tianzhi, zhong,” Sibu beiyao ed., 7.6b–7a. 14. Mozi, “Shangtong, zhong,” Sibu beiyao ed., 3.5a–b. 15. For a fuller discussion of these passages from the Mozi, see Puett, The Ambivalence of Creation, 51–56; To Become a God, 101–104. 16. See Puett, “The Offering of Food and the Creation of Order”; Puett, “Human and Divine Kingship in Early China”; Puett, “Combining the Ghosts and Spirits, Centering the Realm: Mortuary Ritual and Political Organization in the Ritual Compendia of Early China,” in Early Chinese Religion: Shang through Han (1250 BC–220 AD), ed. John Lagerwey and Marc Kalinowski (Leiden: Brill, 2009), 695–720. 17. Liji, “Ji yi,” ICS, 126/25/24–27. 18. Liji, “Ji yi,” ICS, 126/25/28. 19. Liji, “Ji yi,” ICS, 126/25/29. 20. Liji, “Biao ji,” ICS, 151.33.27. ¯ fuchi Ninji 大淵忍爾, Shoki no do¯ kyo¯ 初期の道教 (Tokyo: So¯bunsha, 21. O 1991); Terry Kleeman, Great Perfection: Religion and Ethnicity in a Chinese Millennial Kingdom (Honolulu: University of Hawai’i Press, 1998). 22. For excellent studies of the Xiang’er commentary, see Rao Zongyi 饒宗頤, Laozi Xiang’er zhu jiaojian 老子想爾注校牋 (Shanghai: Guji chubanshe, ¯ fuchi, Shoki no do¯ kyo¯ ; Stephen Bokenkamp, “Traces of Early Celestial Master 1991); O Physiological Practice in the Xiang’er Commentary,” Taoist Resources 4.2 (December 1993): 37–51; Bokenkamp, Early Daoist Scriptures (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1997), 29–77; William G. Boltz, “The Religious and Philosophical Significance of the ‘Hsiang Erh’ Lao-tzu in Light of the Ma-wang-tui Silk Manuscripts,” Bulletin of the School of Oriental and African Studies 45 (1982): 95–117. 23. Michael Puett, “Forming Spirits for the Way: The Cosmology of the Xiang’er Commentary to the Laozi,” Journal of Chinese Religions 32 (2004): 1–27. 24. My translations of the Xiang’er commentary have been aided immeasurably by the outstanding translation given by Stephen Bokenkamp in Early Daoist Scriptures, 78–148. 25. Xiang’er, lines 299–303. I follow Bokenkamp in referencing the line number of the commentary as given in the photographic copy of the manuscript in O¯fuchi Ninji 大淵忍爾, Tonko¯ do¯ kyo¯ : Zurokuhen 敦煌道經: 圖錄編 (Tokyo: Fukutake, 1979), 421–434. 26. Xiang’er, lines 161–163. 27. Xiang’er, lines 374–375. 28. Xiang’er, lines 57–63.

TEN

LINJI AND WILLIAM JAMES ON MORTALITY Two Visions of Pragmatism Tao Jiang

Buddhist teachings have often been interpreted as pragmatic, and there seems to be a prima facie similarity between certain strands of Buddhism and American pragmatism in that both seek to address the world as it is experienced and both advocate a nonfoundationalist philosophy geared toward results. Such similarities make potential cross-cultural fertilization a promising and exciting philosophical endeavor. However, different traditions can exhibit drastically different sensitivities toward certain experiences, and one advantage of comparative study is to help highlight and bring into sharper focus some taken-for-granted premises within a system, challenge the traditions involved to rethink their project, and enrich the parties involved by expanding their horizons and sensitivities. A case in point is the topic of mortality. Death is a subject that is front and center in almost all schools of Buddhism as it occupies an important place in the Buddhist diagnosis of the nature of existence as suffering. In contrast, the subject does not seem to have garnered a similar kind of attention within the classical pragmatist tradition. Maybe it is because death constitutes the ultimate limit of experience, hence rendering it an impossible target for an experience-based philosophical inquiry. Or, perhaps in American culture there is simply a division of labor such that this subject is left to various religious traditions, most of which transform the problem 249

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of death into the promise of a life to come, which some might see as subverting the very nature of the question of mortality. However, William James stands out among his fellow pragmatists in that he explicitly takes up the issue of death and struggles with it in his works, especially later in his life. His writings offer a unique and precious opportunity to examine a pragmatist perspective on mortality and immortality and to engage the Buddhist on this subject. Such a comparative endeavor promises to be revealing in terms of exposing the fundamental difference between these two traditions, which share a pragmatic inclination on many other issues; this is indeed what I hope to accomplish in this essay. On the Buddhist side, I will use the teachings of the Chan (Zen) Buddhist Linji 臨濟, who lived in ninth-century China and is best known for using mindboggling pedagogical devices known as gong’an (J. Ko¯ an) 公案 to instruct his disciples. I will look into what issues motivate James and Linji in their confrontations with mortality, how those issues are formulated, and why they are important to them respectively and comparatively. In covering the what, how, and why through contextualization and recontextualization in my study of James and Linji, I hope that this comparative context can shed new light on both thinkers in regard to their responses to human mortality and desire for immortality, as well as to the traditions they represent. I will make the case that the motivating drive for James in his struggle with mortality and immortality is his hope to accommodate a whole host of human experiences, as well as the various modes of experience, while seeking to promote people’s spiritual and ethical well-being; on the contrary, Linji questions the variety of modes of experience in implicating the problematic role of a reifying mind in those experiences and confronts ignorance and attachment in his teachings with the hope of bringing our confused, chaotic, and ignorant mind into a state of clarity, peace, and enlightenment. Furthermore, James’s approach to the problem of mortality and immortality is fundamentally metaphysical, whereas Linji’s is primarily metapractical. Let us start with James’s treatment of the subject in his lecture “Human Immortality,” delivered as part of the Ingersoll lecture series at Harvard in 1898.1

WILLIAM JAMES ON MORTALITY AND IMMORTALITY James begins his lecture “Human Immortality” with the acknowledgment that “[i]mmortality is one of the great spiritual needs of man” (2). In a number of respects, this acknowledgment sets the tone for his subsequent deliberations; that is, people have a spiritual need for immortality, even though he confesses that “my own personal feeling about immortality has never been of the keenest order, and that, among the problems that give my mind

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solicitude, this one does not take the very foremost place” (2). In other words, his motivation in considering this subject is not primarily personal, at least not at this point of his life. Rather, the concern for others’ spiritual and ethical wellbeing pervades his deliberations on immortality. In the lecture, James defends the possibility of human immortality by countering two objections: the dependence of our spiritual life on the brain as defined by modern science and the traditional selectiveness of the immortality of the aristocratic few. To counter the first objection, James works with the scientific hypothesis “Thought is a function of the brain” (10, James’s italics) and addresses whether such a hypothesis necessarily leads to the denial of the possibility of human immortality. He contends that even if such a hypothesis is true, it does not necessarily mean that the brain produces thought (13). Instead, he makes the case for a possible transmission model of dependence between our spiritual life and the brain: “My thesis now is this: that, when we think of the law that thought is a function of the brain, we are not required to think of productive function only; we are entitled also to consider permissive or transmissive function. And this the ordinary psychophysiologist leaves out of his account” (15, James’s italics). He goes into some detail in laying out scenarios in which the transmission model of the brain is imaginable and indeed possible without sacrificing either common sense or logic. Indeed, it is very much in line with certain idealist philosophies. For James, the transmission model has several advantages over the productive model of the brain, as far as our spiritual life is concerned. On the production-theory one does not see from what sensations such odd bits of knowledge are produced. On the transmission-theory, they don’t have to be “produced,”—they exist ready-made in the transcendental world, and all that is needed is an abnormal lowering of the brain-threshold to let them through. In cases of conversion, in providential leadings, sudden mental healings, etc., it seems to the subjects themselves of the experience as if a power from without, quite different from the ordinary action of the senses or of the sense-led mind, came into their life, as if the latter suddenly opened into that greater life in which it has its source. The word “influx,” used in Swedenborgian circles, well describes this impression of new insight, or new willingness, sweeping over us like a tide. All such experiences, quite paradoxical and meaningless on the productiontheory, fall very naturally into place on the other theory. We need only suppose the continuity of our consciousness with a mother sea, to allow for exceptional waves occasionally pouring over the dam. Of course the causes of these odd lowerings of the brain’s threshold still remain a mystery on any terms. (26–27)

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According to James, the transmission-theory of the brain, and—more importantly—its implication of the possible existence of a transcendental spiritual world with which our consciousness is continuous, has more explanatory potential in accounting for certain “mystical” experiences that various religious traditions describe. James was certainly knowledgeable of the accounts of those experiences at that point, demonstrated in his classic titled The Varieties of Religious Experience (1902), which was published four years after this lecture on human immortality. However, despite the advantages of the transmission model of the brain over the productive model, James is keenly aware of the problems that are generated in conceptualizing the brain this way: [I]n what positive way does this theory help us to realize our immortality in imagination? What we all wish to keep is just these individual restrictions, these selfsame tendencies and peculiarities that define us to ourselves and others, and constitute our identity, so called. Our finitenesses and limitations seem to be our personal essence; and when the finiting organ drops away, and our several spirits revert to their original source and resume their unrestricted condition, will they then be anything like those sweet streams of feeling which we know, and which even now our brains are sifting out from the great reservoir for our enjoyment here below? . . . But into these higher and more transcendental matters I refuse to enter upon this occasion. (29–30) In other words, if human immortality lies in such a transcendental spiritual world, immortality would necessarily mean that we forsake the finitude and individuality that are essential to our identity. In James’s account, the tension between immortality and identity presents the most fundamental challenge as we imagine the possibility of human immortality. His second point “is relative to the incredible and intolerable number of beings which, with our modern imagination, we must believe to be immortal, if immortality be true” (31). He objects to what he calls an aristocratic view of immortality that grants immortality only to a select few, an elite group (32). This is the genuinely democratic James in full display, advocating the replacement of the aristocratic view of immortality with the democratic one. Indeed, in James’s immortal world, there will be non-Christian Chinese! “For my own part, then, so far as logic goes, I am willing that every leaf that ever grew in this world’s forests and rustled in the breeze should become immortal” (43–44). This is James, the poet, speaking. The first problem James has to counter is essentially a scientific one, whose challenge to traditional religious faith was profoundly felt during

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James’s time and reflected in his own life. James was struggling with two conflicting legacies in the American (and Western) intellectual tradition at the turn of the twentieth century; namely, the conflict between science and enlightenment on the one hand and religion and spirituality on the other—or, more specifically, between Darwin’s evolutionism and the Puritan (or Calvinist) faith. His pragmatism is a way to reconcile, if not resolve, such a conflict. For him, a religious faith, even in the absence of evidence (but not in the presence of counterevidence), can be justified and considered rational if it promotes ethical wellbeing for people who subscribe to it. This is his notion of the will to believe, which, as we shall see, might be understood more appropriately as the right or warrant to believe. What James essentially does here is carve out a space in the face of the overwhelming scientific dominance over nearly all aspects of modern life for at least the possibility of faith in a nonprovable but ethically and spiritually efficacious and meaningful invisible world. His rejection of the productive model of the brain as the only viable one can be seen as an attempt to maintain at least the possibility of faith in an invisible spiritual world. Gerald Myers’s comment on the Varieties is relevant here: “His declaration . . . that his approach was pragmatic, his focus on consequences, succeeded only in putting aside the question of how science might outdo philosophy in clarifying the sources of religious feelings.”2 As James’s other writings would reveal, such an unseen world is conceived primarily as a moral world from which our values originate. The second issue James deals with in “Human Immortality” clearly reflects the ethical dimension of his pragmatism. It is a defense of democratic value being extended to the spiritual realm of immortality. However, his presentation here does not map out the practical effects the belief in human immortality has on the way believers lead their lives. For this, we need to turn to some other reflections scattered throughout his writings, most notably in Varieties, Pragmatism, A Pluralistic Universe, and The Will to Believe. As a pragmatist, James is primarily concerned with the ethical consequences of philosophical deliberations, and this is fully displayed in his treatment of the problems of mortality and immortality; his primary concern in regard to this subject is the practical impact any view of mortality and immortality has upon the way life is lived. Accordingly, James advocates choosing the most ethically desirable and satisfying views, as a conscientious pragmatist would and must do. Wayne Proudfoot’s observation is relevant here, even though he is not explicitly commenting on James’s treatment of immortality: “The most general characterization of the religious life, James writes, is ‘the belief that there is an unseen order, and that our supreme good lies in harmoniously adjusting ourselves thereto.’ ”3 Sami Pihlström echoes this observation:

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Indeed, it is important to see how ethical reasoning is central to James’s approach to human immortality. To this extent, we may appreciate Myers’s reflection that it is moral arguments both for and against religious faith that have motivated James’s pragmatic pursuit: It is almost certain that James was tempted by the moral arguments for religious skepticism, that an inner voice suggested to him that one is obligated to withhold belief when there is no evidence. But pulling from the other side was an intense need to believe, and to deny that need by being skeptical was to run an enormous psychological risk. James described the risk as a moral one as well, intimating that he felt a duty to believe because one has a moral obligation to preserve one’s own inner integrity.5 Put simply, on the one hand, to be intellectually honest in philosophical deliberation is an ethical issue that requires evidence to be presented in rational thinking; on the other, the need to believe even in the absence of evidence is also a moral issue in terms of its effects on preserving one’s own inner integrity as well as serving people’s spiritual need. James’s way of resolving this moral dilemma is to resort to the will or the right to believe, which allows people to make a perfectly rational decision to believe when there is an urgent need for the decision in the absence of evidence for or against the belief, provided that such a belief is a genuine option that is “forced, living, and momentous.”6 In The Will to Believe, James argues persuasively that in many cases the will to believe can actually help to bring about the desirable result, even though it obviously does not guarantee such a result. This brings us to a troubling dilemma regarding the belief in immortality within James’s thought: on the one hand, if immortality is a guarantee, as some absolute idealists conceive it to be, this would render human effort pointless and meaningless as James argues; on the other hand, if human mortality is an absolute obstacle that cannot be overcome by human effort in any shape or form, human effort and life would appear to be pointless and meaningless too, since all of their fruits will be lost eventually and the vital human need will be left unaddressed. As a way to accommodate

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both the meaningfulness and fruitfulness of human ethical actions and the possibility of human immortality, James proposes the doctrine of meliorism, which “treats salvation as neither necessary nor impossible. It treats it as a possibility, which becomes more and more of a probability the more numerous the actual conditions of salvation become.”7 As Pihlström aptly points out, “From the Jamesian point of view, the actuality of the world, including the reality of death and/or immortality, ought to be seen as dependent on, or even constructed by, the needs, purposes and interests of personal human beings engaged in their various practices.”8 However, the danger in such an approach is that it does not seem able to account for the fact that “being tied to our finitude, there is a sense in which we obviously cannot be immortal without the help of a non-human reality that can only open itself to us in mystical experience.”9 This tension is on clear display in James’s imagined scenario: Suppose that the world’s author put the case to you before creation, saying, “I am going to make a world not certain to be saved, a world the perfection of which shall be conditional merely, the condition being that each several agent does its own ‘level best.’ I offer you the chance of taking part in such a world. Its safety, you see, is unwarranted. It is a real adventure, with real danger, yet it may win through. It is a social scheme of co-operation work genuinely to be done. Will you join the procession? Will you trust yourself and trust the other agents enough to face the risk?”10 James calls upon us to participate in such an exciting adventure. However, a considerable problem with this scenario is: How can we even be sure that the world has an author? At the heart of James’s struggle is his attempt to accommodate a whole host of human experiences as well as the way they are experienced. Indeed, according to Richard Gale, James advocates a way of life that seeks to maximize the satisfaction of human desires: The best way to characterize James’s philosophy is that it is a passionate quest to have it all, to grab with all the gusto he can, which, for James, means achieving the maximum richness of experience. This requires having each of his many selves, which includes the scientist, moralist, and mystic, fully realize itself. Unfortunately, this grand quest is thwarted by the apparent tensions and conflicts between the perspectives of these different selves. The scientist accepts determinism and epiphenomenalism in a world that is stripped of everything that would give it human value and purpose. But for the moralist there are undetermined acts of spiritual causation in

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In Gale’s eyes, such an attempt to have it all is “James’s boldest and most original contribution to philosophy.”12 The central tension identified by Gale in James’s thought between what Gale calls James’s Promethean self—including the scientist and moralist self—and his mystical self is in full play in James’s approach to the problem of mortality and immortality. In many ways the subject of human mortality and immortality tests the very limits of Jamesian pragmatism, so much so that some James scholars have expressed suspicion as to whether he is still committed to pragmatism on issues such as this.13 What James is attempting can be seen as an admirable effort to maintain what I call “the democracy of human experiences,” which respects and accommodates, to the extent possible within pragmatically acceptable ethical boundaries, what is experienced (from the everyday lived experience to mystical experiences) and how it is experienced (by average folks to religious geniuses). However, due to his earnestness in embracing the varieties of human experiences, both secular and religious, James is forced to engage the inherent tension and conflict of values between drastically different domains. According to him, the apparent incoherence of our experiences is to be tolerated, so much so that as a pragmatic reconciliation a pluralistic universe should be envisioned that can accommodate the plurality of our experiences metaphysically. However, for Buddhists like Linji, such an accommodationist strategy is problematic because it simply deflects the tensions in our experience instead of engaging them. For Linji, the very tensions among the various modes in which we experience the world need an explanation and a solution. For this, let us turn to the teachings of Linji.

LINJI ON MORTALITY AND IMMORTALITY Linji, a ninth-century Chinese Buddhist, was the last of the four major figures (Mazu 馬祖, Baizhang 百丈, Huangbo 黃檗, Linji 臨濟) in the

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famous Hongzhou lineage (Hongzhou zong 洪州宗) of Chan Buddhism. In Heinrich Dumoulin’s words, “with Lin-chi [Linji] Chinese Zen attained its unsurpassed zenith.”14 Linji is well known for his teaching of the true person with no rank (wuwei zhenren 無位真人), intimating an enlightened person of genuine spiritual freedom who is unbound by social norms and conventions.15 The Linji Lu 臨濟錄 (Recorded Sayings of Linji)16 offers a vivid portrait of such a person. Linji is almost legendary for his blasphemous, iconoclastic teachings and unconventional pedagogies such as shouting at his disciples and hitting them with a stick, all of which have now become, rightly or not, stock images of Chan enlightenment. His teaching represents the Chan ideal of self-reliance in the embodied expression of enlightenment and spiritual freedom. What interests us here is Linji’s take on human mortality. True to his Buddhist heritage, Linji frequently invokes the impermanence of life as a way to urge disciples to seek awakening: “Fellow believers, ‘There is no safety in the threefold world; it is like a burning house.’ This is no place for you to linger for long! The deadly demon of impermanence will be on you in an instant, regardless of whether you’re rich or poor, old or young” (24). Here, Linji appeals to the famous image of a burning house in the Lotus Su¯tra to characterize the treacherous nature of life. Clearly mortality, or impermanence of life, is a central consideration in his teaching. But what does he propose to deal with it? Interestingly, instead of envisioning another perfect world of immortality or relying on some extraordinary religious experiences, Linji turns to ordinary, everyday experiences for the answer. For example, we find him saying: The way I see it, there’s no call for anything special. Just act ordinary, put on your clothes, eat your rice, pass the time doing nothing. You who come from here and there, you all have a mind to do something. You search for Buddha, search for the Dharma, search for emancipation, search for a way to get out of the threefold world. Idiots, trying to get out of the threefold world! Where will you go? (53–54) For most Buddhist practitioners, to be emancipated and enlightened means entering into a better world somewhere else that provides the comfort of happiness and eternal life. In sharp contrast with James’s accommodationist inclination (as well as similar tendencies within the Buddhist tradition itself), however, Linji resolutely rejects the very idea of a salvific world somewhere else and regards such an idea as untenable and absurd. An obvious question is in order: According to Linji, what exactly is problematic with the idea of a salvific world different from the one we dwell

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in? A careful examination of the Linji Lu reveals that he is concerned with the reified and projected nature of the ideal of a salvific world, thus creating a tension and dissonance within our everyday experiences. This tension indicates a certain level of unease and discomfort we have in our daily life and fuels our aspiration for a better world somewhere else. In other words, our hope for another world is not, as James would have it, the ground for the possible existence of such a world. Rather, it is reflective of our state of mind here and now in this world and is responsible for the genesis of such an ideal. That is, instead of entertaining the ideal of another world as a genuine expression of human spirituality, Linji sees it as an indication or symptom of a conflicted and dissonant state of mind pervaded by distorting passions and ignorance. In this way, Linji transforms the problem of mortality and immortality into the problem of desire and attachment of our reifying mind. In order to overcome the tension and dissonance in our lives, Linji advocates an awakened state of mind that transforms our ignorant mode of living in this world and puts the conflict and tension to rest in living a peaceful and enlightened life. Accordingly, for Linji, to be awakened is not to ascend to a salvific world somewhere else. Rather, genuine awakening leads us back to the ordinary since, for Linji, the ordinary is in fact the extraordinary, following his dharma predecessor Mazu Daoyi’s 馬祖道一 famous teaching “ordinary mind is the Way” (pingchang xin shi dao 平常心是道). This clearly begs the question: Why is the ordinary mind so attractive? For this, let us take a look at Linji’s own experience of great awakening recorded in the Linji Lu. After studying for years at a temple, Linji was one day invited to raise questions to the abbot, Huangbo. However, Huangbo struck Linji several blows before the student was even able to finish speaking. Unable to understand what the problem was, Linji felt discouraged and frustrated, and he decided to leave the temple. However, he was instructed to see another teacher, Dayu 大愚, at a different temple for clues to Huangbo’s blows. After Linji recounted what had happened to him, Dayu said: “[Huangbo] is such a kind old grandmother, wearing himself out on your account, and then you come here and ask whether you did something wrong or not!” (105–106) Upon hearing this, Linji experienced a great awakening, acclaiming, “There wasn’t much to Huangbo’s Buddha-Dharma after all!”17 In Yanagida Seizan’s interpretation: “According to the traditional explanation, although this can be seen as Linji’s going beyond his teacher in his realization that Huangbo’s Buddha-Dharma is not that great, ‘not much’ does not mean without value; rather it refers to the immediacy in the realization of Buddha-Dharma or the self-evident nature of the Dharma.”18 In Hisamatsu Shin’ichi’s elaboration: It is said that the True Dharma is in no way mysterious. Contrary to what people might think, not to awaken is strange, and when we

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do in fact awaken, we realize there’s nothing mysterious involved. Our being awakened is most ordinary and matter-of-fact. Such ordinariness is the True Self. An awakened person finds it rather strange that he or she had ever been deluded, for to that person Awakening is ordinary and natural.19 This experience of the awakening to the ordinary is crucial in Linji’s approach to Buddhism. That is, according to Linji, to be awakened from the ignorant state of mind is not to have some extraordinary experiences that afford glimpses into a perfect world somewhere else. Rather, it is a new perspective on the ordinary and a new way of living in this world; that itself is extraordinary. In other words, the awakened mode of living has nothing to do with what is experienced but everything to do with how it is experienced. By contrast, the unenlightened person seeks the extraordinary in order to replace the ordinary, favoring an otherworldly ideal over a this-worldly ordinariness. Reaching Buddhist ideals, such as the Buddha, the Dharma, and the Pure Land, is often construed by many devout followers as the equivalent of achieving immortality of the soul. For them, especially those entering the monastic order in search of enlightenment who are clearly the primary audience of the Linji Lu, Buddhist ideals can become something absolute. Regarding such ideals as absolutes is an expression of the pernicious human tendency to reify what is considered to be desirable. Reification is indicative of a grasping mind at work, and it breeds attachment. That is, devout Buddhists become, naturally enough, intensely attached to certain Buddhist ideals. Although it is easy and convenient for them to reject attachment to materially desirable objects as impediments to spiritual well-being, it is much harder to see the problematic nature of reified moral and spiritual objects. Therefore, for those devout Buddhists, intense attachment to Buddhist ideals needs to be overcome. The key to overcoming such an attachment to spiritual ideals is to see those ideals as ways of dealing with the conflict and tension in our lives; as such, those ideals have no ultimate value independent of the very conditions of tension and dissonance in the way our lives are led in this world. Furthermore, underlying our grasping mind is its dualistic structure of reification and attachment, reifying/reified and attaching/attached. What is central to Linji’s teaching is that true awakening is to transform this very structure of attachment, not just to substitute one set of attached objects for another. An attachment to “spiritual” objects does not, ultimately speaking, make the attachment better, since what is changed is simply the object of attachment while the underlying structure of attachment remains firmly entrenched and intact. Much of Linji’s teaching, as recorded in the Linji Lu, is geared toward helping his devout disciples to transform this structure of attachment.

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By resorting to unusually sharp rhetoric to challenge the most cherished Buddhist ideals that some devout Buddhists have constructed in their minds, Linji hopes to assist them in overcoming the intense attachment and tries to let them see those ideals for what they really are, namely mental constructions: Fellow believers, don’t get so taken up with the robe! The robe can’t move of itself—the person is the one who can put on the robe. There is a clean pure robe, there is a no-birth robe, a bodhi robe, a nirvana robe, a patriarch robe, a Buddha robe. Fellow believers, these sounds, names, words, phrases are all nothing but changes of robe. The sea of breath in the region below the navel stirs itself into motion, the teeth batter and mold it, and it comes out as a statement of an idea. So we know for certain that these are mere phantoms. (60) The robe here symbolizes the Chan patriarchal lineage and represents the supreme spiritual authority of the one who wears it. However, Linji dismisses it as a mere phantom. As he sees it, even the most cherished ideals of Buddhism are nothing more than empty names in our verbal games and illusory projections in our mental games, albeit sophisticated and refined. To be awakened is to see the emptiness of all such games, which are the constructions of a reifying mind of attachment that thrives in dualistic thinking. The goal is to go beyond the trap of dualism: “If one could freely meander between the world of undifferentiated equality and the world of differentiated opposition, see no living nor death, one would transcend all such problems.”20 Once Linji’s admonition against attachment to spiritual objects is understood, we will be in a better position to see through the manifestly blasphemous rhetoric in Linji’s teachings, such as the following: And things like the Three Vehicles and the twelve divisions of the scriptural teachings—they’re all so much old toilet paper to wipe away filth. The Buddha is a phantom body, the patriarchs are nothing but old monks. You were born from women, weren’t you? If you seek the Buddha, you’ll be seized by the Buddha devil. If you seek the patriarchs, you’ll be fettered by the patriarch devil. As long as you seek something it can only lead to suffering. Better to do nothing. (47) Linji is rather ruthless in attacking Buddhist ideals. However, the core message he hopes to convey cannot be louder or clearer; that is, these ideals, once reified and ossified, obstruct rather than aid our spiritual awakening.

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For Linji, seeking anything leads to suffering, even if one seeks a spiritual goal such as enlightenment. Furthermore, any seeking is problematic since it is precisely the seeking mind itself that reifies and ossifies those ideals. Linji’s extraordinarily strong language indicates his full awareness of the level of difficulty that is involved in overcoming cherished Buddhist ideals for a devout Buddhist whose life has been oriented toward and guided by those very ideals. What Linji proposes here is to do nothing instead. He elaborates on this in the following passage: If there were such a thing as religious practice, it would all be just karma keeping you in the realm of birth and death. You say, “I observe all the six rules and the ten thousand practices.” In my view all that sort of thing is just creating karma. Seeking Buddha, seeking the Dharma—that’s just creating karma that leads to hell. Seeking the bodhisattvas—that too is creating karma. Studying sutras, studying doctrine—that too is creating karma. The buddhas and patriarchs are people who don’t have anything to do. Hence, whether they have defilements and doings or are without defilements and doings, their karma is clean and pure. (43) What, then, can Linji mean by this advice to do nothing? Given the rigorous and demanding Chan monastic life during Linji’s time, it is inconceivable that Linji would instruct his disciples to do nothing at all.21 Traditionally, this passage is interpreted as Linji’s warning against his disciples’ attachment to various Chan practices, such as meditation, and to the possible result of enlightenment such practices are expected to produce.22 How, then, should one practice nonattachment? Within the context of Buddhist practice, Linji’s advice to do nothing at all can most appropriately be seen as a call for true renunciation in the Buddhist spiritual practice. Dale Wright’s observation is right on the mark here: Buddhist freedom is less an acquisition and an attainment than the result of a renunciation. Freedom is less an expression of power than an abdication of power, a letting go and a release of grip. . . . Zen freedom . . . evokes images of relinquishing autonomy and the will to power in their various forms—the will to explain, the will to certain knowledge, the will to control, the will to security, and so on. It is in this sense that the key to Zen freedom is the figure of renunciation. (135–137) Renunciation is a long-cherished Buddhist practice that can be dated back to the historical Buddha himself, who renounced the comfort of family life

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and other secular ideals in search of enlightenment. Indeed, renunciation within a religious context is usually understood as leaving behind worldly attachments in pursuit of otherworldly ideals. In the case of Buddhism, entering the monastic order is a form of renunciation. However, Linji and other Chan masters drastically radicalize the practice of renunciation when they propose the rejection of even Buddhist ideals.23 If entering the monastery is a renunciation of worldly attachments, Chan awakening is a renunciation of spiritual attachments as well. Worldly attachments and spiritual attachments share the structure of attachment. Buddhists like Linji recognize that the hurdle to an enlightened life is not just attachment to pleasure, permanence, and so on, but also attachment to the Buddha, the Dharma, enlightenment, and the like. This is due to an underlying structure of attachment operative in all of our activities, be they worldly or spiritual. Therefore, we can interpret the message in Linji’s advice for his disciples to do nothing at all as his call for the renunciation of attachment to both material and spiritual objects. Furthermore, when Linji preaches that “there’s no call for anything special. Just act ordinary, put on your clothes, eat your rice” (53), he is actually proposing a fruitful way to practice Buddhist renunciation, namely, by practicing mindfulness. Historically, the mindfulness practice taught by the Buddha is the middle way between exterminating desire as certain ascetics attempted to do (the Buddha himself also tried to follow this path in his early renunciation days) and indulging desire as the materialists of his day advocated. The extreme ascetic attempt to eliminate desire is doomed to fail. [D]esire to get rid of desire is simply one more desire, setting up a vicious circle of desiring to not desire and so on. Moreover, the original desire is a conditioned entity, and will continue to arise as long as its conditions are present. Adding one more condition—the desire to destroy it—will not eliminate it; the only thing that can eliminate it is to remove the conditions of its arising. And again, if eliminated, the desire remains unseen, unexamined, hence its conditions become even more hidden, and thus further entrenched. On top of all that, since the real desire is not for this particular object, but for selfhood, power, mastery, the suppression of any particular desire will be useless—it will simply change forms to find another way to prop up the notion of a self.24 For example, our attachment to material objects can be switched to “spiritual” objects without effecting a transformation of the very underlying psychological structure of attachment. This might lead to the further entrenchment of desires since the mutation of desire from the desire for physical objects

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to the desire for spiritual objects might be easily mistaken as a spiritual accomplishment. According to the Buddha, the real solution resides in being “mindful” of the desire, closely attentive to it. . . . Since ignorance about this was one condition of the arising of the desire, this attentiveness removes one of the necessary conditions of its arising. Deprived of it, the desire fades and ceases. We have let the desire be what it is, be itself—i.e., conditioned, impermanent—and this allows its fading, rather than indulging it or destroying it.25 That is to say, mindfulness practice is the practical way to transform the largely subliminal process of desire and its distorting influence on our mind. Such a practice would lead to the alignment of our mental activities, which leads to clarity, peace, and tranquility instead of confusion, ignorance, and tension. In other words, what is transformed in mindfulness practice, rather than the objects of desire, is the very structure of the psyche itself, which is pervaded by craving and attachment. The Linji Lu is full of instructions to Linji’s Buddhist disciples on how to be mindful in their daily life. For example: Just get so you can follow along with circumstances and use up your old karma. When the time comes to do so, put on your clothes. If you want to walk, walk. If you want to sit, sit. But never for a moment set your mind on seeking Buddhahood. Why do things this way? A man of old said, “If you try to create good karma and seek to be a Buddha, then Buddha will become a sure sign you will remain in the realm of birth and death.” (26) For Linji, to be mindful is to be present with and aware of what is going on in one’s mind as well as the surroundings and to avoid the reifying activity of the flighty mind that conjures up the image of the “Buddha” and then mistakes it as a sign of spiritual progress without realizing that it is the result of one’s powerful mental construction. To sum up our discussion of Linji’s take on the problem of mortality and immortality, we have seen that, for Linji, in order to deal with human mortality, we have to transform our mind from the state of delusion, ignorance, and attachment to the state of clarity, peace, and enlightenment. From his perspective, achieving enlightenment or spiritual freedom is at the core of any solution to a whole host of human ills and predicaments, including mortality. Following the Buddha, Linji does not regard human mortality itself as problematic. Instead, what is problematic is our reifying mind of attachment and craving. For a Buddhist, spiritual freedom, or, as

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Linji puts it, the nondependence on anything whatsoever, or emptiness, is the realization that “Buddha or any being qua substance does not exist.”26 Otherwise, as Takahashi Shinkichi points out, without such a realization, concepts such as “the Buddha” become nothing more than objects of attachment that obstruct a genuine perception of reality and a fruitful spiritual practice.27

LINJI AND JAMES: TWO KINDS OF PRAGMATISM It should be clear by now that Linji and James held vastly different attitudes toward the problem of mortality and immortality and, accordingly, offered drastically different ways of responding to and dealing with them. For James, since immortality is a great human spiritual need, ethical considerations require that such a need be accommodated pragmatically. In stark contrast, Linji refuses such accommodation. From Linji’s Chan Buddhist perspective, James’s accommodationist strategy does not address the underlying problem of craving and attachment with regard to the purported “spiritual” need of immortality. In other words, Linji would challenge James’s approach, which simply embraces what Linji considers to be people’s unenlightened mode of experiencing life and the world. From Linji’s perspective, the best way to deal with a spiritual crisis is to help awaken people from what Buddhists consider to be the deluded state of mind. That is, Linji is more interested in the transformation of the mind than simply validating the mind of conflicting desires and attachments since, for Linji, such an unenlightened mind is the very source of human suffering. Instead of trying to justify what desire and attachment crave, Linji calls attention to their problematic nature, acknowledges them through mindfulness practice, and transforms them through living a life of clarity, peace, and awakening. The question for James and Jamesian pragmatists is whether the solution offered by Linji is palatable. If it is, do they want to simply follow Linji’s Buddhist path or should they offer an alternative path? If it is not, they need to deal with the tension within James’s thought by addressing the problems of desire and attachment more directly, instead of simply assuming that maximum satisfaction of human desires is self-evidently unproblematic. Without addressing the problem of desire in some fashion, James’s system not only suffers from a philosophical incoherence but, more seriously, remains inadequate as a source providing guidance to solving these conflicts in our daily life. Let me conclude my comparative study of Linji and James by probing a bit more into possible rationales for their different attitudes and approaches to the problem of mortality and immortality. The questions that interest me are the following: Why are there such dramatic differences between the two, other than the obvious historical and cultural reasons, and how are their differences reflected in the ways they formulate the problem of mortality and

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immortality? These two questions are closely related, and I will treat them together here. I would like to suggest that a fundamental reason for their differences is the fact that James tries to solve the problem metaphysically whereas Linji treats it as a problem of practice. James, the pragmatist, is obviously interested in human experiences, both in terms of what is experienced and how it is experienced. Due to the inherent conflict between different domains and aspects of human experiences, often derived from conflicting human needs and desires, James is confronted with the thorny issue of how to reconcile these tensions within our experiences. In order to accommodate as many human needs and desires as possible, James envisions a pluralistic universe as the metaphysical solution to take care of human moral, aesthetic, and spiritual needs. Put simply, James turns to metaphysics to solve the practical problem of human mortality and desire for immortality. On the contrary, for Linji, human mortality and desire for immortality are practical problems that are derived from the dissonance and tension in the deluded human mind. How such problems are solved cannot be logically or intellectually constructed since our mind is itself distorted by ignorance, passions, and cravings. As Wright puts it, “Buddhists envision a systematic distortion that pervades all human understanding. Rather than establishing a framework for the discrimination of truth and falsity, Buddhists entertain the possibility that the frameworks we employ for the process of securing truth are themselves subject to the distorting impacts of desire and ignorance.”28 Therefore, what needs to be done is to transform the mind from the state of delusion and attachment to the state of clarity, peace, and enlightenment. Such a transformative orientation in Linji’s way of diagnosing and solving the problem is what Thomas Kasulis calls “metapraxis.” The notion of metapraxis is developed by Kasulis in his ambitious effort to make sense of the unique mode of reasoning in the savific projects of various religious traditions in the world. Kasulis contrasts metapraxis with metaphysics. While the former mode of reasoning attends to concrete religious praxis in bringing about the spiritual transformations of practitioners, the latter mode focuses on working out some philosophical formula that captures truth and reality. Kasulis defines metaphysics and metapraxis this way: By “metaphysics,” we will mean simply the development of a philosophical theory about the nature of reality. Basing our sense of the term on its philological components instead of historical etymology, we can say metaphysics theorizes about what lies “behind” or “beyond” (meta) “natural things and powers” (physis). By analogy, “metapraxis” is the development of a philosophical theory about the nature of a particular praxis, in this case, religious praxis.

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Kasulis is adamant that the distinction between metaphysics and metapraxis is not that between theory and praxis: “Philosophy within a religious tradition can as readily reflect on the nature of the religion’s praxis as on its understanding of reality.”30 This means that they are both theories, but with different concerns. He further elaborates what constitutes metaphysical and metapractical thinking: both metaphysical and metapractical thinking are responses to the human situation. When we go beyond asking what things are to asking why they are that way, or whence they came, and whither they go, we discover metaphysical issues. When we encounter, or devise on our own, competing answers to those questions and try to decide rationally which of those answers is better, we are doing metaphysics. When we go beyond asking what we do as members of that community and start asking why we do it, we undertake metapractical considerations. When we encounter, or devise on our own, competing answers to those questions and try to decide on rational grounds which answer or which praxis is the better one, we start doing metapraxis.31 To apply this understanding to the case at hand, for Buddhists in general, and Chan Buddhists such as Linji in particular, human suffering and ignorance are practical problems that call for solutions in the direction of practice. The Buddha is famous for keeping silent when he was asked to answer some metaphysical questions. Chan Buddhists, including Linji, take such a practical orientation to heart. All of their effort is geared toward finding effective ways to reach an enlightened state of mind; such an orientation is metapractical in Kasulis’s definition. James, to the contrary, is more interested in finding ways to accommodate various practices. This does not mean that James is not interested in praxis—far from it. His book The Varieties of Religious Experience is a perfect illustration of his scholarly interest in various religious practices and experiences. However, James’s pragmatic intellectual orientation is not metapractical, even though he has demonstrated quite a bit of interest in theories of praxis. According to Kasulis, “a metapraxis may relate to, but is not the same as, a ‘theory of praxis’ ”: “A theory of praxis tries to interpret the nature of praxis in general instead of within a particular religious tradition. Although such a theory may advocate its interpretation of praxis, it does not advocate

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one praxis over another (except insofar as any theory is, in one sense, the expression of an academic praxis).”32 Put differently, a metapraxis arises out of the reflection on one’s own praxis as a way of understanding and justifying that particular praxis. A theory of praxis, on the other hand, is a reflection on the purpose and significance of praxis in general. . . . A metapractical theory . . . arises from within the praxis itself for the sake of the people involved in that praxis. It justifies their activity at least to themselves and possibly to some outsiders. It explains not a general theory of dietary restrictions as a religious phenomenon, but why that little girl might decide to maintain those restrictions throughout her entire life. It explains to her what she as an individual can derive from that particular praxis. It appeals to her as a member of one community rather than another. It explains her particular Jewishness, not just her universal humanness.33 Even though James, as a good pragmatist, is obviously interested in praxis, he does not engage in the business of advocating any particular form of praxis, whereas Linji, as a Chan Buddhist master, is an unapologetic advocate for the kind of Chan Buddhist praxis discussed earlier. Clearly, the mode of reasoning for Linji is metapractical while the mode of reasoning for James is metaphysical. Such different modes of reasoning have significantly shaped the ways Linji and James approach the subject of human mortality and immortality. To return to the premise of our comparative study, we now can see with greater clarity that, despite the pragmatic outlook shared by Linji and James as well as the larger Buddhist and pragmatist traditions they represent, Jamesian pragmatism is ultimately grounded in metaphysical speculations, whereas Linji’s Chan Buddhist tradition is fundamentally metapractical in its orientation. Put simply, if we were to call the traditions they represent forms of pragmatism, Jamesian pragmatism can be labeled metaphysical pragmatism while Linji’s is a form of metapractical pragmatism. As a result of this comparative study, we can pose a somewhat different sort of challenge to the two traditions James and Linji represent. From Linji’s Chan Buddhist perspective, can the classical pragmatist tradition deal with philosophical issues metapractically so that it can fulfill its promise of being a philosophy of human experience? On the other side, Jamesian pragmatists can question the malleability of Linji’s Buddhist praxis, challenging it to be more democratically open. Unfortunately, we cannot begin to address these questions without going considerably beyond the themes of mortality and immortality that are the focus of this essay.

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NOTES 1. William James, Human Immortality: Two Supposed Objections to the Doctrine (Boston: Riverside Press, 1899). Further references to this work will appear within the text in parentheses. 2. Gerald Myers, William James: His Life and Thought (New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, 1986), 466. 3. Wayne Proudfoot, “William James on an Unseen Order,” Harvard Theological Review 93.1 (2000): 51–66. Online version. 4. Sami Pihlström, “William James on Death, Mortality, and Immortality,” Transaction of the Charles S. Peirce Society 38.4 (2002): 606. Pihlström’s italics. 5. Myers, William James, 452–453. 6. William James, The Will to Believe and Other Essays in Popular Philosophy (New York: Longmans, Green, and Co., 1911), 3. 7. William James, Pragmatism (Mineola, NY: Dover, 1995), 125. 8. Pihlström, “William James on Death, Mortality, and Immortality,” 614. 9. Pihlström, “William James on Death, Mortality, and Immortality,” 618–619. 10. James, Pragmatism, 127. 11. Richard Gale, The Philosophy of William James: An Introduction (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2005), 1–2. 12. Gale, The Philosophy of William James, 3. 13. For example, Gerald Myers observes, “His [James’s] own mystical interpretation was hardly pragmatic, for it ran not from phenomenon to consequences but from phenomenon to inferred origins, such that there was no way for such an interpretation to be tested. His philosophy of religion is indeed intriguing, but it is certainly not pragmatic” (William James, 466). 14. Heinrich Dumoulin, Zen Buddhism: A History, vol. 1, India and China (New York: Macmillan, 1988), 180. 15. Contemporary scholarship has questioned the veracity of this Chan rhetoric of freedom by pointing out the all-pervasive hierarchical structure of traditional Chinese society as well as Buddhist monasteries. As Dale Wright points out: Collective labor, collective meditation, collective meals, collective dharma discussions, collective sleeping arrangements—all of these came to be institutionalized with the new codes [namely, the “Pure Regulations” (qinggui 清規) of Chan monastic life adopted in the Song dynasty], thus possibly giving Zen a more thorough “collective” character than any previous form of Buddhism. Virtually no dimension of Zen monastic life depended upon individual preference and personal decision making. Freedom, in the form of autonomy at least, was not an important consideration. . . . Nevertheless, in the midst of this “community of constraint,” “freedom” came to be an essential defining feature of the community’s purpose. (Philosophical Meditations on Zen Buddhism [New York: Cambridge University Press, 1998], 123) I will not discuss the institutional aspect of Linji’s teachings in this essay.

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16. Unless noted otherwise, I use Burton Watson’s translation, The Zen Teachings of Master Lin-Chi: A Translation of the Lin-chi lu (New York: Columbia University Press, 1999); page numbers appearing within the text refer to this translation. 17. 元來黃檗佛法無多子! Watson’s translation is: “There really wasn’t anything so hard about Huang-po’s Buddha-dharma after all!” (106) Upon the suggestion of Philip J. Ivanhoe, I am using a slightly revised translation here in order to be more accurate as well as supportive of my interpretation of Linji. 18. Seizan Yanagida, Rinzai roku (Kyoto: Kichu¯do¯, 1961), 201. 19. Shin’ichi Hisamatsu, Critical Sermons of the Zen Tradition: Hisamatsu’s Talks on Linji, trans. and ed. Christopher Ives and Tokiwa Gishin (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2002), 17. 20. Mumon Yamada, Rinzai roku (Kyoto: Zen Bunka Kenkyu¯jo, 1984), 2:12–13. 21. I will not discuss the aspect of this teaching that has clear resonance with the classical Daoist ideal of nonaction (wuwei 無為). Instead, I will interpret this instruction within the context of Buddhist teachings since Linji himself is, more than anything else, a consummate Buddhist master. 22. Seiko¯ Hirata, Teisho¯ Rinzai roku (Tokyo: Hakujusha, 1984), 1:171. 23. This does not mean that Chan Buddhists were the first to radicalize the Buddha’s teachings. We can clearly see Na¯ga¯rjuna’s effort in the Mu¯lamamadhyama kaka¯rika¯ in a similar light. 24. Brook Ziporyn, Being and Ambiguity: Philosophical Experiments with Tiantai Buddhism (Chicago: Open Court, 2004), 6. 25. Ziporyn, Being and Ambiguity, 6–7. 26. So¯gen Asahina, Rinzai roku (Tokyo: Iwanami, 1935), 60. 27. Shinkichi Takahashi, Rinzai roku (Tokyo: Hobunkan, 1970), 50–51. 28. Wright, Philosophical Meditations on Zen Buddhism, 137. 29. Thomas Kasulis, “Philosophy as Metapraxis,” in Discourse and Practice, ed. Frank Reynolds and David Tracy (Albany: State University of New York Press, 1992), 174. 30. Kasulis, “Philosophy as Metapraxis,” 174. 31. Kasulis, “Philosophy as Metapraxis,” 174–175. Kasulis is very clear that metapraxis is just as philosophical as metaphysics: “we are considering them as philosophical activities. By that we mean that they present and defend a position about what is the case with some appeal to rational justification. A simple description is neither metaphysical nor metapractical. A metaphysics or a metapraxis must include an attempt to show why it is better than competing views of reality or of religious praxis” (“Philosophy as Metapraxis,” 174). 32. Kasulis, “Philosophy as Metapraxis,” 175. 33. Kasulis, “Philosophy as Metapraxis,” 179.

ELEVEN

DEATH AS THE ULTIMATE CONCERN IN THE NEO-CONFUCIAN TRADITION Wang Yangming’s Followers as an Example Guoxiang Peng

INTRODUCTION A prevalent view of Confucianism is that Confucian scholars have paid great attention to the value and significance of life while overlooking the question of death, which has been treated as a very important issue in Buddhism, Daoism, and the Western philosophical tradition. Confucian scholars are widely seen as responding to death by ritualizing living people’s sorrow toward the dead and by encouraging the establishment of virtues, deeds, and words to realize the immortality of spiritual life.1 The lines “Not yet understanding life, how could you understand death? (未知生, 焉知死？),”2 said by Kongzi 孔子, have often been quoted to underpin this attitude toward death. As far as the Confucian tradition before the mid-Ming dynasty is concerned, this observation is roughly correct. The question of death was indeed relatively marginalized in Confucian texts before the mid-Ming; as Zhu Xi 朱熹 (1130–1200) said, “The records of the sages and the worthies in the six classics are rich, but discussions about death almost cannot be found. The reason for this is that most Confucian scholars treat death as nothing but an ordinary event in daily life.” (六經記載聖賢之行事備矣, 而於死生 之際無述焉, 蓋以為是常事也。)3 Although death in the Chinese tradition

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in general and the Confucian tradition in particular has received quite deep and detailed attention, the previous studies on this topic are basically limited to the Classical period, at least as far as the Confucian tradition is concerned.4 Can we, however, consequently assert there has been no deep reflection upon and insight into death at all in the larger Confucian tradition? In fact, among Neo-Confucian scholars in the middle and late Ming dynasty, especially among the students and followers of Wang Yangming 王陽明 (1472–1528), death as an ultimate concern received considerable attention. When this important period is taken into consideration, the prevailing observation on death in the Confucian tradition mentioned above will need to be largely revised. In this article, I shall take Confucians in the middle and late Ming dynasty, mostly the followers of Wang Yangming, as an example to probe death as an ultimate concern in the Neo-Confucian tradition. My account includes three interrelated aspects. First, relying upon original evidence, I will point out that the taboo regarding talking about death changed dramatically and that concern with death became a central focus and explicit problem for a large number of Confucian scholars in general and among the followers of Wang in particular. Second, I will show that these Confucians’ concern about death arose not only from the influence of Buddhism but also from the political environment in which they lived. Finally, I will compare the striking views advocated by Wang’s followers about the way to liberate oneself from death with those of Buddhism. I will argue that the origin of the fundamental difference in their responses to death lies in the very different ontological bases of Confucianism and Buddhism. Spiritually, a Confucian may accept wu 無, in the sense of “detachment,” as a kind of living wisdom. Ontologically, however, a Confucian cannot give up you 有, “existence,” or morality as an ultimate commitment. We can therefore see that the Confucian tradition contributes—as other religious-ethical traditions in the world have done—a rich resource to our understanding of death as an ultimate concern of human beings.

DEATH: A FOCUS OF AWARENESS AMONG WANG YANGMING’S FOLLOWERS Until the Song dynasty, Confucian scholars, following Kongzi’s attitude, had basically regarded death as an unavoidable and natural phenomenon and had always faced it peacefully and without great discussion. “In life I follow and serve. In death I will be at peace (存, 吾順事；沒, 吾寧也。),”5stated Zhang Zai 張載 (1020–1077) in his famous Ximing 西銘 (Western Inscription). So, in order to make a convincing case for the claim that death constituted a central focus of awareness among mid-to-late Ming dynasty Confucian scholars, especially Wang’s followers, the first step is to show

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that these scholars had come to understand the exploration of death as an intrinsic dimension of the Confucian tradition rather than as something that belonged only to the Buddhist and Daoist traditions. Wang Ji 王畿 (1498–1583), one of the most brilliant students of Wang Yangming and the most important figure within the late-Ming Wang Yangming School, suggested that the question of how to resolve the problem of death should be an integral part of a Confucian sage’s learning: “If one cannot explore and come to understand the fundamental causes of life and death, then even brilliant work, outstanding talent, and the most successful career will in an instant turn into empty trappings when death comes upon one. In the end, all those things eventually have nothing to do with the life, of what benefit will they be? (若非究明生死來去根因, 縱使文章蓋世, 才望超群, 勳業格天, 緣數到來, 轉眼便成空華, 身心性命了無干涉, 亦何益也？)”6 Zhou Rudeng 周汝登 (1547–1629), a student of Wang Ji’s, further believed that death should be consciously and explicitly pondered by everybody as one of the fundamental questions of human experience. Zhou said: “It is impossible to transcend secular affairs in daily life without understanding the way of life and death; it is impossible to forget about interest, gain, and loss in daily life without understanding the way of life and death. So, those who avoid talking about theories of life and death are simply unthinking. (生死不明, 而謂能通眼前耳目見聞之事者, 無有是理；生死不了, 而謂能忘眼前利害 得失之動者, 亦無有是理。故於死生之說而諱言之者, 其亦不思而已矣。)”7 In the same spirit as these remarks, Guan Zhidao 管志道 (1536–1608), a contemporary of Zhou’s, criticized Confucian scholars of the Song dynasty for missing an inner dimension of Confucianism even while acknowledging their great contributions to the reconstruction of the Confucian way: “Those great Confucians in the Song dynasty made significant contributions to the support of Confucian ethics and to reverence of the Confucian way, but, unfortunately, they never made any profound exploration of Kongzi’s teachings about the mysteries of life and death and the transformations of the spirit, and so they lost sight of these. (有宋大儒, 扶綱常而尊聖道, 厥功不細, 而未嘗深究吾夫子幽明死生遊魂為變之說, 是以失之。)” 8 Although there were many differences, both obvious and subtle, among mid-to-late Ming Confucians, there was almost no disagreement among them when it came to treating death as a crucial element both of the Confucian tradition and of personal ultimate concern. Everybody has to face the possibility of death coming at any moment as soon as one comes into this world. Life and death are inseparable; they are two sides of living. It is impossible for those who have a real embodied understanding of the meaning and significance of living to think of death as something far away from us that can be disregarded. Indeed, it is precisely for such reasons that many Western philosophers have taken death so seriously. For example, as Pierre Hadot has said, learning how to face death was an

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integral part of ancient Greek and Roman philosophy in general and the Hellenistic tradition in particular: it constituted a spiritual exercise.9 Herbert Fingarette has also made several illuminating insights about death and cited many discussions of death by ancient Western philosophers.10 In the traditional Chinese context, it is exactly because a concern with death is not a problem with which only Buddhism and Daoism had been wrestling that so many Confucian scholars, especially those who lived and wrote in the late Ming dynasty, also expressed their strong concern about death as a fundamental anxiety. This is seen very clearly in a number of their poems. As a matter of fact, expressing an explicit or implicit concern about death in poetry was very popular throughout the history of Chinese literature. So, the relative silence of pre-Qin Confucian scholars about death does not mean that this problem was overlooked or ignored. On the contrary, the ostensible silence on this topic may indicate a high level of active and deep deliberation. Most Neo-Confucians in the Northern Song dynasty criticized the Buddhist and Daoist concern with death as nothing but thinly veiled selfish desires for life and fear of death. As Cheng Hao 程顥 (1032–1085) said: Buddhism simply seeks to scare people with talk about life and death. It may seem strange that nobody has realized this for the last two thousand years, but this just shows that they have succeeded in scaring most people. The sage and the worthy take life and death as ordinary aspects of people’s lives and there is no need to fear, so, they don’t talk about life and death. It is only because Buddhists fear life and death that they can’t stop talking about them. (佛學只是以生死恐動人, 可怪二千年來, 無一人覺此, 是被他恐 動也。聖賢以生死為本分事, 無可懼, 故不論生死。佛之學為怕 生死, 故只管說不休。)11 This dominant opinion in the Song dynasty among Confucian intellectuals, however, changed strikingly by the mid-to-late Ming. Wang Yangming already acknowledged that “thoughts about life and death are rooted in and arise along with life and so it is very difficult to get rid of them (人於生死念頭, 本從生身命根上帶來, 故不易去。).”12 Geng Dingxiang 耿定向 (1524–1596) further confirmed that “the desire for life and the fear of death are simply human nature and there is no difference in this regard between the worthy and ordinary people. How can one say there is no attachment to this common feeling? (蓋好生惡死, 賢愚同情, 即欲不著, 焉得不著耶？)”13 Jiao Hong 焦竑 (1540–1620), a student of Geng’s and one of the leading Confucian intellectuals in the late Ming, not only followed Geng’s idea but explicitly elaborated the rightness of the desire for life and the fear of death. Jiao said in a reply to a friend:

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There is an old saying that Daoists bemoan people’s attachment [to life] and so deliberately attract people by teaching about longevity at the very beginning and then lead them to the Dao. I would like to say that Buddhist teachings about liberation from the cycle of life and death are just like this. People practice Daoism because they long for longevity. When they master Daoist teachings, they realize that the authentic self is always activated; people practice Buddhism because of their fear of death. When they finally attain the wisdom of Buddhism, they understand that the authentic self is ultimately beyond death. This reflects living people’s fundamental inclinations and the shortest way to the Dao. Some Confucians may say that this desire to escape the cycle of life and death is just an attempt to benefit the self, but does this mean those Confucians have no fear of death? Or do they just hide that fear in their hearts and deceive one another? If they really don’t have any delight in life and fear of death at all, then those books of Buddhism can be thrown away. But they, I am afraid, will finally be moved by the fear of death simply because they are not ultimately enlightened. Even though they say they are not moved by the fear of death, isn’t this just forced speech rather than real feeling? (古云：黃老悲世 人貪著, 以長生之說, 漸次引之入道〈按：此語本自張伯端《悟真 篇後序》〉。余謂佛言出離生死, 亦猶此也。蓋世人因貪生乃修 玄, 玄修既徹, 即知我自長生。因怖死乃學佛, 佛慧既成, 即知我本 無死。此生人之極情, 入道之徑路也。儒者或謂出離生死為利心, 豈其絕無生死之念耶？抑未隱諸心而漫言此以相欺耶？使果毫無 悅生惡死之念, 則釋氏之書政可束之高閣。第恐未悟生死, 終不能 不為生死所動。雖曰不動, 直強言耳, 豈其情乎？)14 For Jiao Hong, the desire for life and the fear of death are normal human feelings. Only after gaining a thorough understanding of life and death can people really be unmoved by both. If people cannot face the desire for life and the fear of death as psychological realities and simply try to dismiss them as selfish concerns, it is nothing but hypocrisy. In this regard, another Confucian scholar of the late Ming, Yang Qiyuan 楊起元 (1547–1599), not only has the same opinion as Jiao but also further pointed out the positive significance of a fear of death for pursuing the way of the sage. In Yang’s view, the fear of death is such a common feature of the human psyche that even a sage cannot get rid of it. The attitude toward death of Song Confucian intellectuals such as Cheng Hao, as mentioned previously, not only conflicts with genuine human nature but also makes people walk away from the way of sage. In his Da youren bu pa si shuo 答友人不怕死說 (Reply to a friend about no fear of death), he said:

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GUOXIANG PENG According to the Great Appendix to the Book of Changes, the way is not distant from people. Those who try to attain the way but are distant from people actually cannot attain the way. Death is something everybody fears. Since the sage is also a human being, is it reasonable to say that the sage does not fear death?. . . . Every opportunity the sage has for saving the world arises by taking into account people’s fear of death. This is called attaining the way by not being distant from people. Those who transcend life and death by hearing the way, and especially those who are committed to leading the world to peace and safety, only succeed after experiencing an extreme fear of death. Those Confucian scholars in the Song dynasty avoided talking about the fear of death. The result is nothing but initially concealing the real feeling under the guise of having no fear of death and finally coming to really have no fear of death and to really be far from the way. Oh! They simply did not think! (《傳》曰：道不遠人。人之為道而遠人, 不可以為道。死者, 人人所共怕也。聖人亦人耳, 謂其不怕死, 可乎？……凡聖人所以濟世之具, 皆起於怕死而為之圖, 此之謂 不遠人以為道也。而聞道以離生死, 尤其濟世之大而舟楫之堅 者。惟怕死之極, 然後有之。後世儒者諱言怕死二字, 故其始也, 姑以不怕死為名, 而昧其中情。其既也, 遂以不怕死為實, 而去道 實遠。嗚呼！其亦不思而已矣)15

For both Jiao and Yang, the fear of death is not only human nature but also constitutes a motivation for the pursuit of the way for common people. The greater the fear of death people have, the stronger their motivation for pursuing the way. Obviously, in acknowledging that the fear of death constitutes an integral part of the ultimate concern of the Confucian tradition, quite a few Confucian intellectuals in the mid-to-late Ming dynasty no longer generally denied that mentality. Rather, they started to appreciate the fear of death and positively regarded it as an important inner experience that can be transformed into a motivation for pursuing the Confucian way. This recognition seems to contradict the view advocated by Song dynasty Confucian scholars such as Zhang Zai and Cheng Hao. As a matter of fact, however, it should be understood as a further development of these earlier ideas. Cheng Hao’s attitude toward death “as the ordinary result of people’s life and there is no need to fear” is actually not abandoned by the Ming Confucian intellectuals previously introduced. For those mid-to-late Ming Confucians, the attitude described by Cheng Hao is the final stop along the way and the highest spiritual achievement as well; it is the common pursuit of all Confucians. The key, however, is that only by starting from the premise that the “desire for life and fear of death” is part of human nature can people ultimately realize the high spiritual achievement that “regards

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death as an ordinary, not fearful, result of human life.” Those familiar with the story of Wang Yangming’s enlightenment at Longchang 龍場, Guizhou 貴州, in 1508, will immediately realize that the crucial moment of the event was his transcendence of nothing other than the fear of death as a subtle consciousness rooted in his life. Since deliberation on death was regarded as an intrinsic dimension of the ultimate Confucian concern, the desire for life and fear of death could also be a trigger for the pursuit of the way of the sage; whether or not a person could peacefully face the threat of death became a criterion for reaching the level of sage. As Wang Ji said in a letter to one of his students, “As long as one can maintain a sense of peace and serenity in the course of daily life, one naturally will not be unsettled and frantic when death is near. If one often cannot maintain a sense of peace and serenity in the course of daily life, how can one be peaceful and serene when death is near? (平時澄靜, 臨行自然無散亂。平時散亂, 臨行安得有澄靜？)”16 Zha Duo 查鐸 (1516–1589), another student of Wang Ji’s, also said in a letter, “People in ancient times often said life and death are great affairs. If one can handle the coming of death peacefully one will have nothing to fear. But this achievement cannot be reached without lifelong cultivation. (古人每謂生死為大事, 此處了得, 則諸念了矣, 然非臨時所可襲取。)”17 In fact, Zha Duo indeed paid a great deal of attention to the death of his teacher. Because of the spread of some critical gossip about Wang Ji, Zha made a point of visiting Wang’s house to enquire how his master was doing. As far as Zha could tell, the gossip was nothing but empty rumor and his master, while dying, was as poised as ever. Coming to this conclusion, Zha finally felt at ease and wrote a detailed record of Wang Ji’s death to make it clear to the public just how his master faced his own death.18 Similarly, in a sacrificial article to Zha, Xiao Yan 肖彥, his disciple, deliberately recorded Zha’s serene death. According to Xiao’s account, not only did Zha peacefully face his death, he even predicted its date. Actually, there were many similar records of Wang Yangming’s followers in the late Ming. For the sake of brevity, let me cite only two further examples here. One is Wang Gen 王艮 (1483–1540); the other is Luo Rufeng 羅汝芳 (1515–1588). The death of Wang Gen, another leading Confucian as notable as Wang Ji but almost wholly lacking in education, was depicted in the following manner in his chronological biography: A few days before the master [Wang Gen] died, there was always an area of light in his bedroom at night. Everyone thought this was an auspicious sign, but the master said, “That actually means I am going to pass away.” As the master was about to die, all his sons wept and asked if he had any final words. He turned to his second son, Wang Bi 王襞 (1511–1587), and said, “You understand my

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If Wang Ji was noted for his lucid and eloquent writing, Luo Rufang, younger than Wang, was equally well known as a persuasive speaker who could pull at people’s heartstrings. It was said that this Confucian figure of the late Ming even could determine the date of his own death. His dying was portrayed in the following way: On the first day of the ninth month, the master [Luo Rufang] came out of the hall; sitting upright he bade his grandsons approach him with wine and to drink a little bit themselves one by one. After that, he bowed and took leave of all those around him, saying, “I am ready to go.” When they all beseeched him to stay one more day, the master agreed. At noon on the following day, the master put his clothes and hat in order, sat upright, and departed from this world. (九月朔, 盤櫛出堂, 端坐, 命諸孫次第進酒, 各各微飲, 隨拱手別諸生曰：“我行矣。”諸生懇留盤桓一日, 許之。初二日 午刻, 整衣冠, 端坐而逝。)20 According to biographical records, Confucian intellectuals such as Wang Gen and Luo Rufang here not only could face the coming of death with spiritual and physical peace but also could sometimes control or at least predict the date of their own deaths. Some Western scholars have questioned the reliability of this kind of biography, doubting that these are actual accounts of real life recorded without exaggeration.21 This skepticism, of course, can help us to realize the possible discrepancies between biography and real life. No matter how reliable these records might be, however, these narratives strongly suggest that the attitude toward death— that is to say, whether or not one could face death with spiritual and physical serenity—was an important index for measuring whether one had attained the highest stages of the Confucian way. For instance, Gao Panlong 高攀龍 (1562–1621) once evaluated the relative spiritual accomplishments of Zeng Zi 曾子 and Wang Yangming by exploring how well they dealt with the coming of death. In his view, the achievements of these two Confucian masters were precisely defined by their attitudes toward death. Gao wrote: Zengzi insisted on changing the mat he was sitting on so that he would not violate proper ritual even at the moment of his

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death: this reveals the true nature of Zeng Zi. Wang Yangming died after reaching Nan’an: this reveals the true nature of Wang Yangming. Zengzi said, “I am correct and so can pass away; there is nothing more.” This is what made Zengzi the person he was. Wang Yangming’s last words were, “This heart-mind is luminous and bright. What more is there to say?” This is what made Wang Yangming the person he was. (曾子易簀而卒, 便顯出個曾子, 陽明至南安而卒, 便顯出個陽明。曾子曰：“吾得正而斃焉, 斯已矣。”此曾子所以為曾子矣。陽明曰：“此心光明, 更復何 言？”此陽明所以為陽明也。)22 Gao’s strategy was to quote Zeng’s and Wang’s last words in order to reveal and attest to their tranquil acceptance of death. The significant change regarding death in the Confucian tradition that occurred in the mid-to-late Ming dynasty consisted of three related aspects. First, the taboo against explicitly talking about death was exploded and a concern with death became an important, publicly discussed topic, which, as a focus of awareness among leading Confucians of the day, was no longer concealed behind a veil of ignorance. Second, the desire for life and the fear of death were positively appreciated not only as expressions of a common human nature but also, if transformed properly, as strong motivations for pursuing the Confucian way. Third, whether one could face death without any spiritual and physical unease became an important criterion for evaluating one’s spiritual advancement along the Confucian way.

WHY PAY ATTENTION TO DEATH, AND HOW TO LIBERATE ONESELF FROM DEATH? THE RESPONSE OF WANG YANGMING’S FOLLOWERS Attention to life and death has been a sharp and long-standing focus of the Buddhist and Daoist traditions; Buddhism especially has contributed rich resources to the analysis of death. For Confucian scholars, particularly the followers of Wang Yangming, their perennial interplay with and amalgamation of Buddhist thought and practice was one very important reason that a strong and explicit concern about death became a central interest among them. Simply put, that death became an ultimate concern of Confucian scholars in the mid-to-late Ming was a natural outcome of the long-standing mutual influence between Confucianism and Buddhism. As a matter of fact, the three interrelated concerns with death that characterized Wang Yangming’s followers, which were discussed previously, are closely associated with the Buddhist tradition. As Hanshan Deqing 憨山德清 (1545–1623), one of the four famous Buddhist masters of the late Ming, said: “Since ancient times, the reason people left their families to become Buddhists was because of the great affairs of life and death. The reason that Buddha came into this world was for no other reason

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than to reveal this point. There is no Buddhist teaching apart from life and death. Also, there is no life and death apart from Buddhist teaching. (從上 古人出家本為生死大事, 即佛祖出世, 亦特為開示此事而已, 非於生死外 別有佛法, 非於佛法外別有生死。)”23 Taking the desire for life and the fear of death seriously as expressions of a fundamental anxiety and transforming these emotional responses into an inner dynamic for pursuing the way has been a common experience of Buddhists throughout history. Furthermore, taking the acceptance of death with tranquility as a criterion for achievement and enlightenment also has a Buddhist origin. In the Gaoseng zhuan 高僧傳 (Biographies of Great Buddhist Masters) by Hui Jiao 慧皎 (497–554), a Buddhist of the Liang 梁 dynasty, we can find numerous records of many Buddhist masters who were tranquil, serene and poised when they were dying and who could even determine the dates of their deaths. It is quite possible that the previously mentioned dying portraits of Confucians in the late Ming were inspired by Buddhist works such as Hui Jiao’s Gaoseng zhuan. Apart from Buddhist influence, there is another important element that contributed to a concern with death becoming a striking feature of mid-to-late Ming Confucians in general; that is, the cruel and sometimes even bloody political life those Confucian scholars often experienced. The tyranny of the political system of the Ming dynasty, which was quite different from both the Northern and Southern Song dynasties, often pushed Confucian scholars to confront death. In addition to Wang Yangming’s well-known story of attaining enlightenment at Longchang after his own serious deliberations about death,24 there are accounts that show many of Wang Yangming’s followers were witnesses to the political cruelty that characterized the Ming. Four examples of their vivid depictions of political violence will be presented here. The first is that of Qian Dehong 錢德洪 (1496–1554), who, being among the first generation of Wang Yangming’s students, may have been the closest to Wang and the most loyal. Qian once was put into jail because of a political conflict. In one of his letters to Wang Ji, written while in prison, Qian said: When I personally experienced the true path of life and death, I came to regard both self and world as mutually empty. All that remained was the single thought of my luminous soul. Unable to sleep, in the middle of the night, I had a sudden insight and knew that it was Heaven that is the source of this phenomenon; this showed me that my original and true nature was wholly free of even the slightest attachment. (親蹈生死真境, 身世盡空, 獨留一念瑩魂。耿耿中夜, 豁然若省, 乃知上天為我設此法象, 示 我以本來真性, 不容絲毫掛帶。親蹈生死真境, 身世盡空, 獨留一 念瑩魂。耿耿中夜, 豁然若省, 乃知上天為我設此法象, 示我以本 來真性, 不容絲毫掛帶。)25

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The second case involves Wei Liangbi 魏良弼 (1492–1575), who also studied directly with Wang Yangming. Wei “was caned so badly at court that he barely managed to make it back from the brink of death (受杖於殿廷, 死而復蘇)” in two years, and then he “got thrown into prison and tortured again (又下獄拷訊).” As a result of “repeatedly being caned at court, his skin was rubbed off and some bones were so badly broken that they could not be put back together. (累遭廷杖, 膚盡而骨不續).”26 The third case is that of Liu Kui 劉魁 (1488–1552), who began his studies with Wang Yangming but completed them with Zou Shouyi 鄒守益 (1491–1562), another noted and esteemed disciple of Wang Yangming’s. Liu was put into jail for four years. After being released, he was unexpectedly “arrested and put into jail again before even reaching the gate of his house (未抵家而復逮).”27 The last example is Nie Bao 聶豹 (1487–1563). Strictly speaking, he was not Wang Yangming’s disciple as he never got a chance to meet Wang face-to-face, though the two exchanged letters. Nie Bao, however, identified himself as Wang’s disciple and was accepted as a disciple by Wang Ji and Qian Dehong after Wang Yangmin’s death.28 Nie once experienced a vision of his authentic mind-heart while he was in jail. As he described it, “[i]n the midst of the long seclusion and extreme stillness of prison, I suddenly realized the true nature of the mind-heart; it was illuminating and limpid, and all the ten thousand things were present within it. (獄中閑久 靜極, 忽見此心真體, 光明瑩澈, 萬物皆備。獄中閑久靜極, 忽見此心真體, 光明瑩澈, 萬物皆備。)”29 There are many similar examples that I do not have space to discuss here. In short, standing at the edge of death because of frequent political turmoil forced Confucian intellectuals of the time to ponder deeply the problem of death and to make dying with tranquility a criterion for embodying the Confucian way. It is exactly this point that wholly differentiated Confucian scholars of the Ming dynasty from those of the Song. Although Buddhism was one of the reasons that death developed into a crucial concern for Confucians in the mid-to-late Ming dynasty, Confucian accounts of the way to gain liberation from death were strikingly different from those of Buddhism. The following is a record of a dialogue between Wang Yangming and Xiao Hui about the way of life and death: Xiao Hui asked about the way of life and death. The master [Wang Yangming] said, “If you know day and night, you then know life and death.” Xiao Hui, therefore, asked about the way of day and night. The master said, “When you know the day, then you know the night.” Xiao Hui asked again, “Is there really anything I do not know about the day?” The master said, “You really think you

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GUOXIANG PENG know the day? You wake up in a fog, eat dully, don’t scrutinize your conduct or explore your practice. Since you remain muddle-headed throughout the day, what you know about the day is nothing more than a daydream. Only by cultivating and preserving in every moment of your daily life, always ensuring that your inner mindheart is on alert and bright and that you are never separated from heavenly principle can you really understand the day. This is the virtue of heaven, the way of penetrating the day and the night. There is no life and death beyond this. (蕭惠問死生之道。先生曰：“知 晝夜即知死生。”問晝夜之道。曰：“知晝則知夜。”曰：“晝亦有 所不知乎？”先生曰：“汝能知晝？懵懵而興, 蠢蠢而食。行不著, 習不察。終日昏昏, 只是夢晝。惟息有養, 瞬有存, 此心惺惺明明, 天理無一息間斷, 才是能知晝。這便是天德, 便是通乎晝夜之道, 而知更有甚麼死生？)30

It is clear from this dialogue that Wang Yangming had a deep, personal, and embodied knowledge of life and death, but it seems he deliberately did not provide a full elaboration here. Rather, he seemingly just followed the classical strategy that Kongzi inaugurated, with his teaching “not yet understanding life, how could you understand death?” Wang Ji later made a more explicit articulation of the origin of life and death and also the way of liberation from life and death. At a meeting held in 1575 at the Dou Shan Academy of Xin An (新安鬥山書院), Wang Ji said: The reason people undergo life and death and rebirth (samsara) lies in thoughts and consciousness. Thoughts are products of a dualistic mind;31 some are good while others are bad: there is no constancy. That is the seed of rebirth. Consciousness distinguishes and discriminates; it is the spirit of wisdom: it arises suddenly and suddenly disappears; there is no stop. That is the root and cause of life and death. This is a general truth that has held in both the past and present and also an actual event taking place at this very moment. It’s really bewildering that some Confucian scholars take it as a heresy and abstain from talking about it because they regard it as a delusion. Thoughts are rooted in the mind; the ultimately accomplished person has no mind and so thoughts cease and naturally there is no rebirth. Consciousness changes into knowledge; the ultimately accomplished person is without knowledge, his consciousness is empty, and naturally there is no more life and death. For ordinary people, we may say there is life and death; for the ultimately accomplished person, we may say there is no life and death. Both saying there is life and death and saying there is no

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life and death are reasonable. These two seemingly contradictory sides mutually generate each other, responding without end. Those who do not understand the way are not prepared to hear what I have said here. (人之有生死輪回, 念與識為之祟也。念有往來, 念 者二心之用, 或之善, 或之惡, 往來不常, 便是輪回種子。識有分 別, 識者發智之神, 倏而起, 倏而滅, 起滅不停, 便是生死根因。此 是古今通理, 亦便是見在之實事。儒者以為異端之學, 諱而不言, 亦見其惑也矣。夫念根於心, 至人無心, 則念息, 自無輪回。識變 為知, 至人無知, 則識空, 自無生死。為凡夫言, 謂之有可也。為 至人言, 謂之無可也。道有便有, 道無便無, 有無相生, 以應於無 窮。非知道者, 何足以語此？)32 For Wang Ji, “the root and cause of life and death” is generated from the differentiation of subject and object. If we can “transform thoughts and return to the original mind-heart (hua nian huan xin 化念還心)” and “transform consciousness into wisdom (zhuan shi cheng zhi 轉識成智),” then we can transcend life and death. This point of view, which holds that the way of gaining liberation from life and death depends upon the consciousness of the subject, prevailed among Confucian scholars of the mid-to-late Ming. For instance, when asked by a student about how to liberate himself from life and death, Zhou Rudeng said, “Both life and death are attributed to the mind. If you put down your mind, what life and death will there be? (生死俱是心。心放下, 有甚生死可了。生死俱是心。心放下, 有甚生死可 了？)”33 Zou Yuanbiao 鄒元標 (1551–1624), a Confucian scholar noted for his integrity and moral bravery in the late Ming, also said: “Thoughts are the source of life and death. Where there is calculating consciousness, there is life and death. Where there are not thoughts there will be no life and death. (人只是意在作祟, 有意則有生死, 無意則無生死。)”34 A student of Zhou Rudeng’s, Liu Gao 劉塙 directly quoted Buddhist concepts while criticizing them, saying, “The scattering and aggregation of the four elements (mahabhuta) is less important for life and death; the separation and joining together of thoughts is more important for life and death. If you forget the more important while cherishing the less important, this is known as not understanding life and death. (四大聚散, 生死之小者也。一念離合, 生死之大者也。忘其大而惜其小, 此之謂不知生死。)”35 To be fair, “the root and cause of life and death” and the way of liberation from death to the consciousness of the subject are ideas that originated in Buddhism. It is inappropriate to criticize the Buddhist understanding of life and death only from the perspective of the physical body, as Liu Gao did. The Buddhist understanding of the root and cause of death is actually “the separation and joining together of thoughts (yi nian li he 一念離合)” rather than “the scattering and aggregation of the four elements (mahabhuta) (si da ju san 四大聚散).”Although it is an expression of vijnanavada that

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the root and cause of life and death lies in the seed of the alaya-vijnana (“storehouse consciousness”),36 it is in general a common belief accepted by other branches of Buddhism, even those that do not use that terminology of vijnanavada. The crucial point is that while certain of Wang Yangming’s followers had a totally different understanding of the consciousness of the subject than what one finds in Buddhism, both sides took the consciousness of the subject as the root and final cause of life and death. Precisely because of this, all those who took a concern with life and death as their focus of awareness—including those previously mentioned—conformably kept their Confucian identity because of their views about the way to liberate oneself from death. This suggests that despite the broad similarities noted here, a deep discrepancy remained between Confucianism and Buddhism regarding the issue of death. What is the Confucian way of gaining liberation from death? Let us explore the answers provided by some of Wang Yangming’s followers. At a meeting in 1575, when replying to a student’s question about Kongzi’s teaching that “while not yet understanding life, how could you understand death?” Wang Ji offered the following explicit illustration: This one sentence already has explained everything. From birth to death, we only have this illuminating mind-heart as our commander. In the course of human life, there are always business and leisure, ups and downs, praise and blame, gain and loss, and so on. If this illuminating mind-heart can always lead us, we will not descend into emptiness while we are in leisure; we will not be led astray by things while we are busy. If, whether at leisure or busy, the illuminating mind-heart can always keep equilibrium, this will guarantee that we will maintain our poise throughout life and death: this must be the case whether there are ups or downs, praise or blame, gain or loss, and so on. Knowing life means knowing death. The illuminating mind-heart is one with the great cosmos: it is eternally present throughout infinite stretches of time; it lives from the beginning to the end and never knows death. (此已一句道盡。吾 人從生至死, 只有此一點靈明本心為之主宰。人生在世, 有閑有忙, 有順有逆, 毀譽得喪諸境。若一點靈明時時做得主, 閒時不至落 空, 忙時不至逐物, 閑忙境上, 此心一得來, 即是生死境上一得 來樣子。順逆、毀譽、得喪諸境亦然。知生即知死。一點靈明, 與太虛同體, 萬劫常存, 本未嘗有生, 未嘗有死也。)37 Late in life, Wang Ji further explicated his view of life and death and the way to gain liberation from death in a letter to Li Jian’an 李漸庵. Wang’s elaboration is actually an interpretation of Kongzi’s saying. Wang wrote:

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Kongzi said, “Not yet understanding life, how could you understand death?” This is a thorough and definitive teaching. There is nothing more to add. We live between heaven and earth; are influenced by and respond to a myriad of causes and conditions. We experience gain and loss, good and bad, praise and blame, benefit and harm. If our mind-heart is slightly moved by any one of these, we will also be moved when death comes. . . . Death is to life as night is to day. If we understand the day, we then understand the night. There is no duality. (孔氏云：“未知生, 焉知死。”此是究竟語, 非有所 未盡也。吾人生於天地間, 與萬緣相感應, 有得有失, 有好有醜, 有稱有譏, 有利有害。種種境界, 若有一毫動心, 便是臨時動心樣 子。……生之有死, 如晝之有夜, 知晝則知夜, 非有二也。)38 Zhou Rudeng, echoing his teacher’s words to “put down your calculating mind,” and when asked by a student how to put down the mind, responded by saying, “If you really understand the teaching of Kongzi about knowing life and knowing death, it is not necessary to say ‘put down.’ (要知孔門說知生知死, 則放下二字俱多。)”39 There is also a dialogue between Xu Yongjian 徐用檢 (1529–1611) and one of his students that reflects a similar orientation to the way of gaining liberation from death. A student asked, “Since you, my master, don’t deny the teaching about life and death, why don’t you focus on that teaching? Instead, you always teach us the concepts of xing [human nature], of xue [learning], why?” The master [Xu Yongjian] said, “Human nature is to follow the five constant behaviors and learning is to return to your original human nature. This is the all-pervading and most correct way. We live according to this and we die according to this: is there anything that is not included? If I just focus on life and death, then life is nothing but a lodging, while death is nothing but a return. Such a teaching is nothing more than selfishness.” (問：“先 生既不非生死之說, 何不專主之？而曰性、曰學, 何也？”曰：“性 率五常, 學求復性, 大公至正之道也。如此而生, 如此而死, 何不 該焉？專言生死, 生寄死歸, 自私耳矣。”) 40 We can conclude that the basic attitude toward death and the way to gain liberation from death advocated by Wang Yangming’s followers are both based upon the classical ground of Kongzi’s saying, “Not yet understanding life, how could you understand death?” These views return to the fundamental standpoint of understanding death from the perspective of life, even though they take a strong concern with life and death as their central problematic. Obviously, for Confucian scholars such as Wang Ji, Zhou

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Rudeng, and Xu Yongjian, the key to being liberated from life and death lies in gaining enlightenment about the meaning and significance of one’s present life rather than in an exploration of the afterlife world. In their view, the more experience and appreciation we have of life, the deeper our understanding of death. So, Kongzi’s saying does not necessarily overlook or underappreciate death. Instead, what it emphasizes is that knowing what life is about is a precondition for knowing what death is. In other words, the correct direction for understanding death should be from life to death, not the other way round. It is precisely in this sense that Kongzi’s reply is quite different from his saying that “[n]ot yet understanding life, how could you understand death?” in response to Zi Gong’s 子貢 question about death. In this latter case, Kongzi talked about death so much and positively that Zi Gong was deeply moved and exclaimed, “Death is so great! (大哉死乎！)”41 It is precisely through their interpretation of Confucian scholars in the mid-to-late Ming, discussed previously, that the real and deep connotation in Kongzi’s teaching is fully deciphered and developed. With the development of Buddhism, from early Buddhism to Mahayana Buddhism and then to Chan Buddhism, Buddhism in the Chinese context increasingly paid a great deal of attention to the idea that “life and death are unified with nirvana (生死即涅槃),” which was influenced by the notions of dvi-satya (er di 二諦; the two truths) and madhyamaprtipad (zhong dao 中 道; the middle way). This trend, paralleling the Buddhist influence on the Confucian tradition, was actually an outcome of the accumulated impact of Confucianism’ s this-worldly orientation on Buddhism. So, it seems that Buddhism and Confucianism were converging in terms of their views on life and death. But based upon the belief in the six ways of rebirth, Buddhism could not, after all, give up its commitment to an after-death world and still prayed for the pure land as a transcendental paradise away from the abyss of misery of this world.42 Exactly at this point, Buddhism, whatever subcategory it can be classified into, still exhibits its sharp contrast with the way Wang Yangming’s followers sought liberation from death.

ONTOLOGICALLY DIFFERENT WAYS OF TRANSCENDING DEATH: CONFUCIAN VERSUS BUDDHIST The reason the Confucian way of transcending life and death is ultimately different from the approach of Buddhism lies in an ontological contrast. As far as ontology is concerned, the standpoint of Confucianism is close to realism, whereas the standpoint of Buddhism is quite the opposite. In short, the former appeals to you 有 (“existence”) while the latter relies upon wu 無 (“nonexistence” or “emptiness”). As mentioned before, in addition to Kongzi’s saying, “Not yet understanding life, how could you understand death?” Wang Yangming’s followers appealed to another Confucian classic,

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the Book of Changes. They often invoked one sentence in particular: “Tracing it to its origin and returning to its end, we then may understand life and death. The refined qi 氣 [vital energy] constitutes things and wandering souls constitute changes. In this way, we understand the nature and form of ghosts and spirits. (原始反終, 故知死生之說。精氣為物, 遊魂為變, 是故知鬼神 之情狀。)” “Tracing it to its origin and returning to its end” actually refers to the endless circulation of vital energy. As an indispensable material basis for moral creativity, vital energy is an irreducible reality. Although Wang Yangming’s followers did not talk about the vital energy very often, they never denied this point. The origin of life and death is indeed generated from the consciousness of the subject, as Zou Yuanbiao suggested: “There will be no life and death at all if the calculating consciousness can be gotten rid of (無意則無生死)”; “the scattering and aggregation of a concentration of the mind is the most important for life and death (一念離合, 生死之大者也).” Eliminating the consciousness of life and death, however, does not mean accepting the Buddhist idea, namely, all phenomena arise in dependence upon causes and conditions, have no being of their own, are empty of a permanent self (pratitya-samutpada), and conceiving of the subject of life and death as an ephemeral, illusory expression of no self-substance (svabhavah). From a Buddhist perspective, death means the scattering of the causes and conditions that constitute our life. Since life is nothing but a temporary constellation of causes and conditions without permanent reality, it has no ontological existence. It is precisely through death that this emptiness as the nature of life is revealed. In contrast, for Wang Yangming’s followers, innate knowledge—which is an expression of the moral self—is indeed “never effaced throughout the ages. (千古不磨)”43 As Wang Ji said, it “is identified with the great cosmos and exists eternally, even enduring through ten thousand eons （與太虛同體, 萬劫常存）.” He added: This point of spiritual illumination exhausts all within heaven and earth, the four oceans, and the most ancient history. It has never been added to nor diminished; it cannot be gained or lost; it is the root of our nature and life. To realize it is called realizing our nature; to establish it is called establishing our life. Originally, there is no life and no death. The back and forth of life and death is just like the alternating of day and night. (緣此一點靈明, 窮天窮地, 窮四海, 窮萬古, 本無加損, 本無得喪, 是自己性命之 根。盡此謂之盡性, 立此謂之立命。生本無生, 死本無死, 生死 往來, 猶如晝夜。)44 Specifically, our natural or biological life is the aggregating or scattering of vital energy rather than the generating or annihilating of the vital energy. Qi is always you (existence) rather than wu (nonexistence); this offers a

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view that is fundamentally different from Buddhist emptiness. Take the metaphor of day and night as an example, death for life is just like night for day; there is no termination or disconnection but the endless circulating of eternal continuity. From the perspective of both the creativity of moral substance and the everlasting circulation of vital energy, death absolutely does not mean that life is exterminated, nor does it lead to annihilation. So, on the one hand, the Confucian way of transcending death is to sublimate the limited natural life into infinite spirituality through moral self-cultivation. On the other, behind this way of transcendence or liberation, there is an ontological and cosmological basis defined by vital energy. Just as Geng Dingxiang asserted, “At the start, it is generated out of the great undifferentiated state of the cosmos; in the end, it returns to the great undifferentiated state. Tracing it to its origin and returning to its end, there is actually no generation or termination. Everything in the cosmos is just like this. (始自太虛來, 終還太虛去。原始反終, 本自無生, 亦自無滅, 一切眾生, 總皆如是。)”45 In this regard, roughly speaking, we may say that the ontological and cosmological basis of Confucianism is close to realism, whereas that of Buddhism is close to idealism. Now, let me give two more examples of Confucians in the late Ming to reinforce the conclusion I have drawn here. Both Gao Panlong and Liu Zongzhou 劉宗周 (1578–1645) differentiate the Confucian way of transcending death from that of Buddhism in precisely the way that I have described. Strictly speaking, neither Gao nor Liu can be classified as followers of Wang Yangming. However, this shows that the contrast with Buddhism concerning the proper response to death can be taken as reflecting a consensus among Confucians in the mid-to-late Ming. In 1618, Gao Panlong wrote twenty poems which were collected into the Wuwu yin 戊午吟; the following two poems appear therein: Hearing what the way is like at dawn can one die at dusk,46 Life and death have always been constants of the way. No one has ever heard of there being day without night, Who has ever seen yin without yang? As long as there is the way, how can there be old age or early death? If one’s heart is at peace, one can regard both as equal and balanced. If one seeks to pursue the way without attending to this, One will travel throughout the entire world in vain. 聞道如何夕可死, 死生原是道之常。 不聞有晝可無夜,

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幾見無陰只有陽？ 道在何從見壽夭, 心安始可等彭殤。 更與此外求聞道, 踏遍天涯徒自忙。 Refined vital energy constitutes the achievement of producing our bodies, Wandering souls constitute changes vast and limitless! If we take death as termination and annihilation, Then we’ll fall into the false vision that Chan Buddhism criticized. Spontaneous transformation is natural and unfathomable, To be attached to neither existence nor nonexistence is true emptiness. Don’t be misled by attributing emptiness to Buddhism; The tenuous and the solid have always been the same as the manifested and the subtle. 精氣為軀造化功, 遊魂為變浩無窮。 如何謂死為滅盡, 反落禪訶斷見中。 神化自然稱不測, 有無不著是真空。 莫將空字謾歸佛, 47 虛實原與顯微同。 In addition, in a prose work titled Xike shuo 夕可說 (“Explanation of what one can do by dusk”), Gao further elucidated the same themes expressed in these two poems by interpreting Kongzi’s saying, “If at dawn you learn of and tread the way, you will have no regret even if you die at dusk. (朝聞道, 夕死可矣。)” Life and death are the way. They can be compared to bubbles or foam; when these dissolve, they are water: calm and unmoving. If we want to return to the original calm state [of our mind-heart], why must we abandon daily life and work to preclude the arising of any thoughts whatsoever? Let the ruler rule, the minister minister, the father be a father, and the son a son. The myriad phenomena are full of majesty; the constant principles do not change. When I interact with them, sometimes they calm and I am calm, sometimes they stimulate and I am stimulated. There is continuity in the myriad stimulations and calmnesses, and so there is continuity

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GUOXIANG PENG in the myriad occurrences of life and death. (死生, 道也。譬之於 漚, 其滅, 一水也, 寂然不動者也。吾欲復寂然者, 豈遺棄世事, 務一念不起之謂哉？君君、臣臣、父父、子子, 萬象森羅, 常理 不易。吾與之時寂而寂, 時感而感, 萬感萬寂而一也, 故萬死萬 生而一也。)48

As the last great Confucian scholar at the end of Ming dynasty, Liu Zongzhou made this point more explicitly in an appendix to a record of a meeting with his students: Explanations for understanding life and death originated with Chan Buddhism. Kongzi’s teaching about “tracing it to its origin and returning it to its end” concerns a common, shared principle of heaven, earth, and the myriad things and is not a reference to the life and death of a single body. Since the teachings of the sage has [sic] become obscured, students all look at things from a materialistic point of view and pay too much attention to personal life and death. Heaven, earth, and the myriad things are excluded from the realm of their concerns and the dynamic and creative force of the mind-heart has been cut off and become a dormant seed. As a result, their spiritual practice is exclusively concerned with exploring the [Buddhist] path of avoiding rebirth (i.e., nirvana). When they are reborn, as before they simply seek life and fear death. In contrast, the self-cultivation we Confucians follow takes the heaven, earth, and the myriad things as a single great body. The beginning of heaven and earth is exactly the beginning of the self; the end of the heaven and earth is also the end of the self. End upon end, beginning upon beginning, there is no conclusion to the process. Our teaching about life and death is nothing but this. So, from the start, life and death are simply ordinary things. Cheng Hao said, “If we can put our selves into the context of heaven and earth, and regard both small and great as equally important, how pleased we then will be!” I say that the teaching about life and death should precisely be put into the context of heaven and earth, and we should regard both small and great as equally important. Once we understand this, we will understand the learning that concerns how to fully grasp principle, develop our nature, and attain our destiny. If you only seek to understand while clinging to the perspective of living a physical life that endures no more than one hundred years, then the life you understand will only be the life that craves life and the death you understand will only be the death that fears death. Does this mean we don’t need to understand our physical life that is lived within the span of one hundred years? I say, “Why should

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we not try to understand it?” Kongzi’s teaching, “If at dawn you learn of and tread the way, you can die at dusk without regret” is precisely the answer. What does it mean to learn of and tread the way? The crucial point lies in breaking through and eliminating the conscious concern with life and death. Grasping this point does not require searching in the distance for one hundred years; the rising and passing away of one’s thoughts all contain the evil of a conscious concern with life and death. When there is no longer any arising or passing away, as a matter of course, there will be no life and death. (理會生死之說, 本出於禪門。夫子言原始反終, 這是天地萬物公共的道理, 絕非一身生來死去之謂, 與禪門迥異。 自聖學不明, 學者每從形器起見, 看得一身生死事極大, 將天地萬 物都至之膜外, 此心生生之機早已斷滅種子了。故其工夫專究到 無生一路, 只留個覺性不壞。再做後來人, 依舊只是貪生怕死而 已。吾儒之學, 宜從天地萬物一體處看出大身子, 天地萬物之始 即吾之始, 天地萬物之終即吾之終, 終終始始, 無有窮盡, 只此是 死生之說。原來死生只是常事。程伯子曰：“人將此身放在天地 間, 大小一例看, 是甚快活。”余謂生死之說正當放在天地間大 小一例看也。于此有知, 方是窮理盡性至命之學。籍令區區執百 年以內之生死而知之, 則知生之盡, 只是個貪生之生；知死之盡, 只是個怕死之死。然則百年生死不必知乎？曰：奚而不知也？ 子曰：“朝聞道, 夕死可矣”是也。如何是聞道？其要只在破除生 死心。此正不必遠求百年, 即一念之間一起一滅, 無非生死心造 孽。既無起滅, 自無生死。)49 Life and death are commonly conceived of in terms of the emergence and termination of individual physical lives. If, however, we consider life and death in terms of the endless circulation of qi and “the continuity of being,”50 the emergence and termination of a physical life is only the product of a mind attached to a narrow conception of life and death. There is only the transformation of different types of existence and the conservation of vital energy in the cosmos. From this point of view, there is virtually no life or death. The understanding and transcending of life and death that Gao and Liu exhibited exemplifies again the argument that the difference between the Confucian way of gaining liberation from death and that of Buddhism originates in a contrast between the Confucian you and the Buddhist ontology of wu. Let us go back to the issue we raised at the very beginning of this essay. We set out to scrutinize death as an ultimate concern that caught and commanded the attention of mid-to-late Ming dynasty Confucian scholars in general and Wang Yangming’s followers in particular. This led us to see that we no longer could say that the Confucian tradition, in relation to Buddhism, ignored the issue of death as a common and ultimate concern

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of human beings. Quite to the contrary, Confucianism can contribute rich resources on this topic, just as other great religious and ethical traditions of the world have done. As a matter of fact, if complicacy and nuance are given proper consideration, we find that the issue of death has not always been the focus of every great mind in the course of the history of Western thought. In addition, in various historical periods, we find a remarkably diverse range of views and levels of attention when it comes to responses to death.51 The present study reveals that much the same can be said about the Confucian tradition.

NOTES 1. Kang Yunmei 康韻梅, Zhongguo gudai siwang guan zhi tanjiu 中國古代死 亡觀之探究 (Taipei: National Taiwan University, 1994), 198–236. Unfortunately, the Confucian materials this book employed are limited to classical Confucianism. The Neo-Confucian period was entirely overlooked. 2. For English translation of the Analects, I use Roger T. Ames and Henry Rosemont, Jr., The Analects of Confucius: A Philosophical Translation (New York: Ballantine Books, 1998); D. C. Lau, Confucius: The Analects (Hong Kong: The Chinese University, 1983). Occasionally, I alter the cited translation. All English translations of Song and Ming material are mine unless otherwise noted. 3. See Zhu Xi, “Ba Zheng Jingyuan jian 跋鄭景元簡” (Epilogue to Zheng Jing-yuan’s writings), in Zhu Wengong wenji 朱文公文集, vol. 80. 4. See Ying-shih Yu 余英時, “Views of Life and Death in late Han China (Ph.D. diss., Harvard University, 1962); Ying-shih Yu, “Life and Immortality in the Mind of Han China,” Harvard Journal of Asiatic Studies vol. 25, (1964–65): 80–122. Ying-shih Yu, “’O’ Soul, Come Back!’ A Study in the Changing Conception of the Soul and afterlife in Pre-Buddhist China,” Harvard Journal of Asiatic Studies 47.2 (1987): 363–395. Also see Michael Loewe, Chinese Ideas of Life and Death: Faith, Myth and Reason in the Han Period, 202BC–AD220 (London: Allen and Unwin, 1982); P. J. Ivanhoe, “Death and Dying in the Analects,” in Confucian Spirituality, ed. Wei-ming Tu and Mary Evelyn Tucker (New York: Crossroad Press, 2003), vol.1 (revised version appears in this volume). 5. See Wm. de Bary and Irene Bloom, Sources of Chinese Tradition (New York: Columbia University Press, 1999), 1: 684. 6. See Wang Ji’s “Zisong wenda 自訟問答,” in Wang Longxi xiansheng quanji 王龍溪先生全集, vol. 15. 7. See Zhou Rudeng’s “Wulin huiyu 武林會語,” in Dongyue zhengxue lu 東越證 學錄, vol. 3. In Huang Zongxi’s Mingru xue’an 明儒學案 (Records of the Ming Confucian Scholars), Zhou was regarded as a disciple of Luo Rufeng 羅汝芳 (1515–1588) and was arranged in Taizhou School(taizhou xuepai 泰州學派. Accordingly, the students of Zhou in Zhejiang, such as Tao Wangling 陶望齡 (1562–1609) and Liu Gao 劉塙, were all included in Taizhou School. As a matter of fact, this categorization is totally wrong and misleading. I have presented a clear and thorough analysis of this issue based on exhaustive source materials: Guoxiang Peng 彭國翔, “Zhou Haimen de xuepai guishu yu Ming Ru xue’an xiangguan wenti zhi jiantao (周海門的學派歸屬

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與《明儒學案》相關問題之檢討),” in Qinghua xuebao 清華學報 (Tsinghua journal of Chinese studies), 31, 3(2002), 339–374. 8. See Guan Zhidao’s “Zhu guanzizai pusa mingshi mofa zhong biqiu huimie zhengfa yishi wu shi fayu yin 注觀自在菩薩冥示末法中比丘毀滅正法一十五事法語 引,” in his Xianzhang yuji 憲章餘集, vol. 2. 9. Pierre Hadot, Philosophy as a Way of Life: Spiritual Exercises from Socrates to Foucault, trans. Michael Chase (Oxford: Blackwell, 1995), 93–101. 10. See Herbert Fingarette, Death: Philosophical Soundings (Chicago and La Salle: Open Court, 1996). 11. See Cheng Hao’s 程顥 “Duanbo fu shishuo 端伯傅師說,” in Henan chengshi yishu 河南程氏遺書, vol. 1. 12. See Chuanxi lu 傳習錄, vol.3. 13. See Geng Dingxiang’s “Chuli shengsi shuo 出離生死說,” in Geng Tiantai xiansheng wenji 耿天臺先生文集, vol. 7. 14. See Jiao Hong’s “Da youren wen 答友人問,” in his Danyuan ji 澹園集, vol. 12. 15. See Yang Qiyuan’s Taishi Yang Fusuo xiansheng zhengxue bian 太史楊復所 先生證學編, vol. 2. 16. See Wang Ji’s “Da Yin Q-ming 答殷秋溟 (A reply to Yin Qiuming), in Wang Longxi xiansheng quanji, vol. 20. 17. See Zha Duo’s “Zai yu Xiao Duiyu shu 再與蕭兌嵎書 (Second letter to Xiao Duiyu), in Yizhai Zha xiansheng chandao ji 毅齋查先生闡道集, vol. 2. The record of Wang Ji’s death is also in Yizhai Zha xiansheng chandao ji, vol. 9. 18. Also see “Zai yu Xiao Duiyu shu 再與蕭兌嵎書.” 19. See Wang Gen’s 王艮 Chongjuan Wang Xinzhai xiansheng quanji 重鐫王 心齋先生全集, vol. 1. 20. See Luo Rufang’s 羅汝芳 Luo Jinxi xiansheng quanji 羅近溪先生全集, vol. 1. 21. See Ira Bruce Nadel, Biography: Fiction, Fact and Form (London: Macmillan, 1984). 22. See Gao Panlong’s Gaozi yishu 高子遺書, vol. 1. 23. See Hanshan dashi mengyou quanji 憨山大師夢遊全集, vol. 3, Fayu, Shi Miaozhan zuozhu 法語·示妙湛座主. 24. See Nianpu 年譜, vol. 1. Wang Yangming’s enlightenment happened in 1508. 25. See Huang Zongxi’s Mingru xue’an 明儒學案, vol. 11, Zhezhong wangmen xuean yi 浙中王門學案一. 26. See Huang Zongxi’s Mingru xue’an 明儒學案, vol. 19, Zhezhong wangmen xue’an si 江右王門學案四. 27. Ibid. 28. See, “Wang Longxi xiansheng nianpu 王龍溪先生年譜 (The Chronological Biography of Wang Ji) in Guoxiang Peng 彭國翔, Liangzhi xue de zhankai: Wang Longxi yu zhongwan Ming de Yangming xue 良知學的展開——王龍溪與中晚明的陽 明學 (The Unfolding of the Learning of the Innate knowing of the Good: Wang Longxi and Yangming Learning in the Mid-to-late Ming) (Taipei: Xuesheng shuju, 2003), traditional Chinese version, 574–575; (Beijing: Sanlian shudian, 2005), simplified Chinese version, 528–529.

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29. See Huang, Mingru xue’an, vol. 17, Jiangyou wangmen xue’an er 江右王 門學案二. 30. See Chuanxi lu 傳習錄, vol. 1. 31. I need to make a clarification of my English translation of the term xin 心 here. We know that xin has basically two different meanings in Neo-Confucian tradition. One is daoxin 道心 or benxin 本心; the other is renxin 人心. I use “mindheart” to translate the former while simply “mind” or “calculating mind” to translate the latter. In the paragraph I quote, xin refers basically to the latter, which is why I simply use “mind” rather than “mind-heart” as the translation of xin. 32. See Wang Ji’s “Xin’an doushan shuyuan huiyu 新安鬥山書院會語,” in Wang Longxi xiansheng quanji, vol. 7. 33. See Zhou Rudeng’s “Shanzhong huiyu 剡中會語,” in Dongyue zhengxue lu, vol. 5. 34. See Huang, Mingru xue’an, vol. 23, Jiangyou wangmen xue’an ba 江右王 門學案八. 35. See Huang, Mingru xue’an, vol. 36, Taizhou xue’an er 泰州學案二. 36. See Yin Shun 印順, Weishi xue tanyuan 唯識學探源 (Taipei: Zhengwen Press, 1987), 163. 37. See Wang Ji’s “Huayang minglun tang huiyu 華陽明倫堂會語,” in Wang Longxi xiansheng quanji, vol. 7. 38. See Wang Ji’s “Da Li Jian’an di er shu 答李漸庵第二書,” (The second letter to Li Jian’an), in Wang Longxi xiansheng quanji, vol. 11. 39. See Zhou, “Shanzhong huiyu 剡中會語.” 40. See Huang, Mingru xue’an, vol. 14, Zhezhong wangmen xue’an si. 41. There is a dialogue between Zi Gong and Kongzi about death recorded in Xunzi rather than in the Analects. See Wang Xianqian 王先謙, Xunzii jijie 荀子 集解 (Beijing: Zhonghua shuju, 1988), 510–511. Zi Gong’s final sigh that “death is so great” is exactly the concluding remark of that dialogue. 42. See Fu Weixun 傅偉勳 (Charles Wei-hsun Fu), Shengming de zunyan yu siwang de zunyan 生命的尊嚴與死亡的尊嚴 (The Dignity of Life and The Dignity of Death) (Taipei: Zhengzhong shuju, 1994), 152–153. 43. Here I borrow this phrase “never effaced throughout the ages” from a well-known poem that Lu Jiuyuan 陸九淵 (1139–1193) composed when he met Zhu Xi at Ehu 鵝湖 in 1175. 44. See Wang Ji’s “Liudu huiji 留都會紀,” in Wang Longxi xiansheng quanji, vol. 4. 45. See Geng, “Chuli shengsi shuo.” 46. This phrase is obviously from the Analects. 47. See Gao, Gaozi yishu, vol. 6. 48. See Gao, Gaozi yishu, vol. 3. 49. See Liu Zongzhou 劉宗周, “Zhengren she yulu dijiu hui fuji 證人社語錄第 九會附記,” in Liu Zongzhou quanji 劉宗周全集 (Taipei: The Institute of Literature and Philosophy, Academia Sinica, 1996). 50. Here I borrow the title of one of Wei-ming Tu’s thought-provoking articles, “The Continuity of Being: Chinese Visions of Nature,” in Confucianism and Ecology: The Interrelation of Heaven, Earth, and Humans, ed. Mary Evelyn Tucker and John

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Berthrong (Cambridge: Harvard University Center for the Study of World Religions, 1998), 105–122. 51. See Geoffrey Scarre, Death (Stocksfield, U.K.: Acumen, 2006).

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CONTRIBUTORS

Roger T. Ames is a Professor of Philosophy at the University of Hawai‘i at Manoa and editor of Philosophy East & West. His most recent publications include translations of the following Chinese classics: Yuan Dao: Tracing Dao to its Source (1997) and Sun Bin: The Art of Warfare (2008, SUNY Press), both with D. C. Lau; the Confucian Analects (1998) and the Classic of Family Reverence: A Philosophical Translation of the Xiaojing (2009), both with H. Rosemont; and Focusing the Familiar: A Translation and Philosophical Interpretation of the Zhongyong (2001) and A Philosophical Translation of the Daodejing: Making This Life Significant (2001), both with D.L. Hall. He has also authored many interpretative studies of Chinese philosophy and culture, including Thinking Through Confucius (1987), Anticipating China: Thinking Through the Narratives of Chinese and Western Culture (1995), and Thinking From the Han: Self, Truth, and Transcendence in Chinese and Western Culture (1997), all written with D. L. Hall and published by SUNY Press. He has most recently been engaged in attempting to define Confucian role ethics (with H. Rosemont) and writing articles promoting a conversation between American pragmatism and Confucianism. Mark Berkson is an Associate Professor in the Department of Religion at Hamline University. Mark received his Ph.D. from Stanford University in Religious Studies and Humanities. His work has appeared in such journals as the Journal of Religious Ethics, TeJusaching Theology and Religion, and the Journal of Buddhist-Christian Studies, as well as in edited volumes published by SUNY Press and Blackwell Publishers, among others. He is currently working on a book entitled Holding On and Letting Go: Confucians and Daoists on Good Deaths and Exemplary Lives. Mark Csikszentmihalyi is a Professor of East Asian Languages and Cultures at the University of California, Berkeley. He has published several books on early Chinese religion and philosophy and edits the Journal of Chinese Religions. Currently he is putting together a translation of a set of Song dynasty essays on the Zhuangzi. Jue Guo is an Assistant Professor in Comparative Religion at Western Michigan University, specializing in early China from the Warring States 297

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period to the Han (i.e., fourth century B.C.E. to second century C.E.) with a focus on practice and beliefs, particularly on a popular level that is not associated with traditional and institutionalized religions. Widely utilizing recently discovered archaeological materials including tomb objects and texts along with historically transmitted literature, she aims to explore the multifaceted religious world of early China through the lens of practices in people’s daily lives. Currently she is writing a book on a fourth-century B.C.E. Chu tomb (Baoshan Tomb 2) and the divination manuscripts found in it. Philip J. Ivanhoe, who earned his Ph.D. from Stanford University, is a Reader-Professor of Philosophy at City University of Hong Kong. He has written, edited, or co-edited more than a dozen books and published more than thirty articles and numerous dictionary and encyclopedia entries on Chinese and Western religious and ethical thought. Among his more recent publications are Readings in the Lu-Wang School of Neo-Confucianism (Hackett Publishing Company) and the co-edited anthology Working Virtue: Virtue Ethics and Contemporary Moral Problems (with Rebecca Walker, Oxford University Press). Among his forthcoming works are The Essays and Letters of Zhang Xuecheng (Stanford University Press) and the co-edited anthology Taking Confucian Ethics Seriously: Contemporary Theories and Applications (with YU Kam-por and Julia TAO, SUNY Press). Tao Jiang is Associate Professor in the Department of Religion at Rutgers University, New Brunswick, New Jersey, teaching Buddhism, classical Chinese thought and comparative philosophy. He is the author of Contexts and Dialogue: Yoga¯ca¯ra Buddhism and Modern Psychology on the Subliminal Mind (University of Hawai‘i Press, 2006). His articles have appeared in Philosophy East & West, Journal of the American Academy of Religion, Journal of Chinese Philosophy, Journal of Indian Philosophy, Continental Philosophy Review, and Dao. Amy Olberding, who earned her Ph.D. from the University of Hawai‘i in 2001, is Associate Professor of Philosophy at the University of Oklahoma. Her work has appeared in Philosophy East and West, Dao, Journal of Chinese Philosophy, Ancient Philosophy, Philosophy and Literature, and International Philosophical Quarterly. Guoxiang Peng 彭國翔 is a Professor of Chinese philosophy, intellectual history and religions at Peking University in Beijing. He is also secretary general of the Chinese Society for Confucian Studies and one of the executive editors of the Journal of the History of Chinese Philosophy. He was visiting professor, visiting scholar, and research fellow of universities including University of Hawai‘i, Harvard University, National Taiwan

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University, The Chinese University of Hong Kong, and Ruhr-University Bochum in Germany, etc. His publications include The Unfolding of the Learning of the Innate Knowledge of the Good: Wang Longxi and Yangming Learning in the Mid-to-late Ming (Taipei, 2003; Beijing, 2005), Confucian Tradition: Between Religion and Humanism (Beijing, 2007), Confucian Tradition and Chinese Philosophy: Retrospect and Prospect (Shijiazhuang, 2009), and more than seventy peer reviewed articles. Mu-chou Poo, who earned his Ph.D. from Johns Hopkins in 1984, is Professor of History, The Chinese University of Hong Kong. His publications include Wine and Wine Offering in the Religion of Ancient Egypt (London: Kegan Paul, 1995); In Search of Personal Welfare: A View of Ancient Chinese Religion (SUNY Press, 1998); and Enemies of Civilization: Attitudes toward Foreigners in Ancient Mesopotamia, Egypt, and China (SUNY Press, 2005). He edited a volume, Rethinking Ghosts in World Religions (Leiden: Brill, 2009). Michael Puett is a Professor of Chinese History at Harvard University. He is the author of The Ambivalence of Creation: Debates Concerning Innovation and Artifice in Early China and To Become a God: Cosmology, Sacrifice, and Self-Divinization in Early China, as well as the co-author, with Adam Seligman, Robert Weller, and Bennett Simon, of Ritual and its Consequences: An Essay on the Limits of Sincerity. Eugene Y. Wang is the Abby Aldrich Rockefeller Professor of Asian Art at Harvard University. His extensive publications range from ancient to contemporary Chinese art and visual culture. His book, Shaping the Lotus Sutra: Buddhist Visual Culture in Medieval China (Seattle: University of Washington Press, 2005), received an academic achievement award from Japan in 2006. He has also received the Guggenheim Fellowship.

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INDEX

NOTE: In this index, “mortality” refers to the state of finitude of life in which all humans find themselves at all times; “death” refers to the moment of the end of life and the events surrounding it. Abram, David, 224n57 activity, skillful, 193, 209–210, 214, 216, 217, 223n45 Adams, Robert, 150n27 afterlife: bureaucracy in, 17, 20, 32, 91, 97–98, 100–103, 130; Buddhist understandings of, 286; correspondence to world of the living, 102; dangers in, 38, 42, 76, 103; democratic, 253; diversity of understandings of, 1, 7–8, 32, 38, 86, 95, 104; Han-period understandings of, 87–88; hierarchy in, 17, 18, 20, 27, 97–98, 238, 240; historical sources on, 87; and human agency, 254–255; as journey, 4, 38, 71–72, 74–75, 82n80, 88–93, 95–96, 106n16, 108n42, 108n45, 130; and justice, 32, 85–86, 90, 104, 110n49, 139, 146; Kongzi’s understanding of, 139, 142; nonChinese understandings of, 1, 19, 86, 137, 249–256, 264–267; in oraclebone inscriptions, 18, 96; location of (see under soul); as merging with cosmos, 229, 238; pre-Buddhist understandings of, 4, 13–33, 31, 32, 85–105; purposes of belief in, 32, 44; resurrection, 97; sages and, 229, 238, 242; skepticism about, 192, 193–194, 257–258; and social class, 8, 18, 100–101; and social mobility, 17; as stasis, 4; taxation, 27, 100;

Zhuangzi’s understanding of, 109n49, 110n49, 192, 193–194. See also Dark City; heaven; Mount Tai; other worlds; soul; Yellow Spring agency, human: and afterlife, 254–255; as influencing death (see ming 命 [allotment]: human agency); limits of, 185–187, 211; and timeliness, 186, 189n13 Akins, Zoë (1886–1958), 220n21 Allan, Sarah, 79n29 Allinson, Robert, 222n42 allotment of life. See ming 命 Analects (Lunyu): and death, 5–6, 139–142, 149n21, 158; and ming 命 (allotment of life), 180–187; and mortality, 5–6, 138–147; and mourning, 140–141 ancestor worship, 96, 130, 131, 226– 227, 230, 240–242, 244–245, 246 animals, death of, 149n13 archaeology, mortuary. See under tombs Ariès, Philippe (1914–1984), 173n11 Aristotle, 149n19 artificiality. See ren 人 asceticism, 259 attachment: in Buddhism, 258–260, 263–264; in Daoism, 275; to ideals, 259–262 Bao Xian 包咸 (ca. 6 b.c.e.–ca. 65 c.e.), 182 Baoshan 包山, Hubei, 96–97, 178–179

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INDEX

“barbarian” cultures, 133n5 Becker, Ernest, 147n1 belief, religious, 253–255 benevolence, in Zhuangzi, 207, 221n34 Benson, Hugh, 173n8 Berling, Judith, 222n43, 224n58 Bo Niu 白牛, death of, 139–140, 146, 173n13, 180–181 Bo Yi 伯夷 and Shu Qi 叔齊, 141 body: in depictions of afterlife, 56–57, 74; relationship to cosmos, 4; and the self, 224n58; and space, 62, 74–77; and temporality, 224n58; in underworld, 48–49; and yin and yang, 62–67, 69–70, 74 Bokenkamp, Stephen R., 86, 87 Book of Changes. See Yijing Book of History. See Shujing Book of Odes. See Shijing brain, 251–252 Brashier, Kenneth, 106n13, 247n2 breath cultivation, 52–56, 61, 64–69, 73, 83n87 Buddha, 262, 266, 279–280 Buddhism: arrival in China, 4, 85–86, 109n49; and afterlife, 286; awakening, 258–259, 262–265; Chan 禅, 8, 157, 222n41, 250, 257, 262, 268n15, 286, 290; dialogue with Neo-Confucianism, 8, 274, 279–280, 281–286; and dvi-satya (two truths), 286; heavens and hells in, 32, 85–86, 90; hierarchy in, 268n15; and idealism, 288; Lotus Sutra, 257; middle way, 262, 286; monasticism, 268n15; and nirvana, 286, 290; practices, 265–267; and pragmatism, 249–250; and Pure Land, 286; and samsara (cycle of life and death), 275, 282, 286, 290; and the self, 222n41, 259, 262, 283–284; understandings of death and mortality, 272, 275, 279–280, 283–284, 287, 290; Yamas, 105n2. See also attachment; desires bureaucracy: in afterlife, 17, 20, 32, 91, 97–98, 100–103; among spirits and

deities, 180; effect on understandings of afterlife, 20 buren 卜人 (diviners), 42 burial practices: extravagance criticized, 28; hierarchy and, 3; modern, 35n37; “proper,” 28–29; royal, 18, 22–23; social status and, 3, 14–15, 17, 30–31, 95, 113n60, 113n63. See also coffins; ritual; tombs burial site, 26, 42, 104 Buzhou 不周 (mythical place), 105n10 Cangshan 蒼山, Shandong, 91–92 Chang’e 嫦娥, 21–22, 57 Chen Huang 陳鍠, 79n33 Chen Songchang 陳松長, 112n57 Chen Zhi 陳直, 112n57 Cheng Hao 程顥 (1032–1085), 274, 275, 276, 290 Cheng Yi 程頤 (1033–1107), 149n17 Christianity, 211, 223n51 Chuci 楚辭 (Songs of Chu; Songs of the South), 19, 76, 86, 89, 110n49, 110n50, 179 Cicero (106–43 b.c.e.), 220n21 clothing, in soul-summoning ritual, 42, 44–45, 47, 56, 78n18, 78n24, 107n19 coffins, depictions of afterlife on, 62–74, 94 common sense, 119–121, 130, 134n9 Confucianism: definitions of, 10n1; dialogue with Daoism, 121; early understandings of mortality in, 5, 138–147; and memory, 222n43; and realism, 288; taboo on discussion of death, 272, 274, 276, 279, 282, 291–292; understanding of the self, 222n41; understandings of wu 無 and you 有 (detachment and existence), 272, 286–288, 291. See also Analects; Kongzi; NeoConfucianism Confucius. See Kongzi correlative thinking: avoidance of extremes, 132; compared to scientific method, 124–125; compared to Western philosophy, 122, 129,

INDEX 133n2; definition, 124–125; and mortality, 123–132; persistence of, 119; reason and abstraction in, 127; and warfare, 4–5, 122–127; and yin and yang, 122 corvée labor, in afterlife, 27 Cratylus (5th century b.c.e.), 193 Csikszentmihalyi, Mihaly, 223n45 culture: assumptions, 120, 134n9, 154–155, 161, 173n2; essentialism in study of, 118, 133n2; and language, 120; persistence, 119–121, 130; relativism in study of, 118, 133n2; thickness, 4, 117–118, 119–120 Da dai liji 大戴禮記, 109n49 Dao 道 (the Way): as creator, 245; definitions of, 194, 258; and good death, 141–142, 207–209; and the good life, 140, 146–147, 149n12, 150n27; human opposition to, 192; and justice, 244, 245–246; and rationality, 192, 200–201, 203, 204–206, 209, 212–215, 218, 220n26, 224n58; and sages, 232–233, 242. See also flux Daodejing 道德經 (Book of the Way and its Virtue), 127, 131–132, 135n29, 194, 223n55, 243 Daoism: Celestial Masters, 243; critique of mourning ritual, 6–7; and death ritual, 28, 114n68; dialogue with Confucianism, 121, 274, 275; and ghosts, 103; and justice, 246; and lifespan, 131–132, 179, 204–207, 275; meditation, 222n43; and rebirth, 86; and tomb texts, 102; understandings of death and mortality, 6–8, 275, 279; and Zhuangzi, 218n1 daotong 道統 (transmission of the Way), 183 death: acceptance of, 192, 194–202, 217, 219; in Analects, 139–147, 154–172, 271; of animals, 149n13; Buddhist understanding of, 272, 287; of children, 153–154, 157; Confucian

303

(early) understanding of, 271; Confucian taboo on discussion of, 272; definitions, 42, 51; as disrupting daotong 道統 (transmission of the Way), 183; effect on the living, 88, 130, 141, 143–146, 154, 158, 160, 167–172; fear of, 149n14, 193, 202, 210, 218, 238, 244, 274–277, 279; foreknowledge of, 190n21, 277, 278, 280; good, 6, 141–142, 144, 149n20, 158–159, 207–209, 277, 280, 281, 289–290; of good vs. bad people, 140; and justice, 178; Kübler-Ross on, 219n9; and memory, 131; as natural, 192, 199, 207–209, 221n38; Neo-Confucian understanding of, 271–292; non-Chinese understandings of, 149n14, 153– 154, 292; as omen, 182, 189n17; origin of, 138, 287; of parent, 5–6, 154–172; of parent, predictability of, 157–158, 168, 170–171; of parent, uniqueness of, 168–170; in poetry, 274; rates of, 153; reasons for, 282; in service of the Dao, 141–142; as a unity with life, 192, 194, 200–201, 228–229; whether tragic, 5–6, 118, 139, 142, 144–145, 153–154, 158–159, 172n1, 192, 201–202, 220n21; of young vs. old people, 26, 140, 153–154, 158–159, 173n1, 192, 201–202, 220n21; Zhuangzi’s understanding of, 193–194 deification, 236. See also self-divinization deities. See under shen 神; see also Tian 天 (deity) democracy, 253, 267 Derrida, Jacques (1930–2004), 154 desires, 223n55, 258, 262–263, 265 Dewey, John (1859–1952), 134n9 diviners. See buren卜人 dixia 地下 (underground): definition, 46; depictions of, 46; as location of afterlife, 18–20, 32, 48–49, 77n4, 96; as destination of po 魄 soul, 88, 90, 225; sun’s journey through, 52, 67; under control of heaven, 103

304

INDEX

dualism, 86, 88, 90, 106nn12–13, 107n28, 192, 200, 211, 223nn50–51 duty, in parent-child relationship, 163, 168, 174n18, 174n24 dyadic associations. See correlative thinking dynastic change, 231–231 ejaculation, control of, 54, 60, 80n52 Eliade, Mircea, 106n13 emotions, 195, 215. See also grief Epictetus (1st–2nd century c.e.), 148n7 Epicurus (341–271 b.c.e), 148n7 essentialism. See under culture existentialism, 1, 138, 143, 145 Fangmatan 放馬灘 tomb, Gansu, 97, 179 fangshi 方士 (magicians), 28 fate. See ming 命 Feng Hanji 馮漢驥, 84n108 Fengsu tongyi 風俗通義 (Collected Explanations of Popular Customs), 179–180 filiality. See parent-child relationship Fingarette, Herbert, 166 five depots. See wucang 五藏 flow state, 223n45 flux, cosmic, 63, 75, 122, 124, 127, 128–130, 192, 194–203, 206–209. See also Dao 道 forgetfulness, as practice, 192–193, 210, 216–217, 222n43. See also memory Freeman, Mark, 219n11, 223n46 Freud, Sigmund (1856–1939), 137 fu 復 (soul-summoning ritual): 19, 38–44, 56, 62, 90, 107n19, 108n42, 109n46, 226 fusu 復蘇 (re-awakening; revival of life), 49–54, 56–57, 62–63, 90 Fuxi 伏羲, 21–22, 183 Gale, Richard, 255–256 Gao Panlong 高攀龍 (1562–1621), 278–279, 288–289, 291 gaodi 告地 (informing-the-underground) texts. See under texts

Gaosang zhuan 高僧傳 (Biographies of Great Buddhist Masters), 280 Geng Dingxiang 耿定向 (1524–1596), 274, 288 geomancy: 42; augurs (see shi 筮) ghosts. See gui 鬼 Gongyangzhuan 公羊傳 (Gongyang’s Tradition; Commentary of Gongyang), 189n17 Graham, Angus Charles, 125, 133n4, 196, 203, 211, 220n28 Grand One, the. See Taiyi 太一 Granet, Marcel, 119 grave goods. See tombs: items of everyday use in; tombs: ritual items in; tombs: surrogate objects in grief: appropriate vs. excessive, 156–160, 173n7, 182–183, 196– 200, 215–216; distinguished from mourning, 155–156, 173n7; whether natural, 196, 199–200, 219n13; whether rational, 156–157; and self-cultivation, 156, 161; and social order, 161; as virtuous, 156, 160, 161, 167–172. See also mourning Gu Yanwu 顧炎武 (1613–1682), 85, 104, 107n27 Guan Zhidao 管志道 (1536–1608), 273 gui 鬼 (ghosts), 225–246; as agents of social order, 8; belief in, 7–8, 103; blessings from 227, 233, 237, 239, 241; control of, 225–227, 230, 236, 240, 242; whether dangerous, 225–227, 236, 238, 242, 243, 246; in Daoism, 103; distinguished from shen 神 (spirits), 77n4; and filiality, 241; hierarchy among, 238, 240; and justice, 238, 240, 243, 246; Kongzi on, 148n5; origin of concept of, 85, 106n12; sacrifice to, 225–227; and sages, 230, 236 Guo Xiang 郭象 (d. 312 c.e.), 194, 220n26 Guo Xueren 郭學仁, 81n68 Guoyu 國語 (Discourses of the States), 185

INDEX Hadot, Pierre, 173n14, 273–274 Hall, David, 125 Han Wudi 漢武帝 (156–87 b.c.e.), 243 Hanfeizi 韓非子, 110n49 Hanjiang 邗江, Jiangsu, 97 Hanshan Deqing 憨山德清 (1545– 1623), 279–280 Hanshu 漢書 (History of the Han), 109n49, 184 Harper, Donald, 97–98 Hawkes, David, 86, 179 He Bingdi 何炳棣, 4, 123, 135n29 He Xilin 賀西林, 81n55, 81n68 He Yan 何晏 (190–249 c.e.), 182 heart-mind. See mind-heart; see also mind; xin 心 heaven: Buddhist, 85–86; as controller of underground, 103; as dangerous, 38–41, 89, 94; definition, 46; depictions of, 47, 57; as destination of hun 魂 soul, 25, 90, 92, 225; as destination of soul, 38, 45, 48, 89, 107n28, 228, 247; as destination of souls of royalty, 18, 96; non-Chinese understandings of, 223n51; origin of concept of, 110n49; as physiological state, 76; xian 仙 (immortals) in, 90, 96. See also Tian 天 (deity) heavenly beverage. See tianjiang 天漿 Heavenly Emperor. See shen 神: Tiandi 天帝 Heavenly Sire. See Tiangong 天公 Hegel, G. W. F. (1770–1831), 145, 146 hell: Buddhist, 32, 85–86; diyu 地獄, 85; origin of concept of, 86, 110n49 hierarchy: in afterlife, 17, 18, 20, 27, 97–98, 238, 240; in Buddhism, 268; and burial practices, 3 Hisamatsu Shin’ichi, 258–259 Hope, Anne, 189 Hou Ching-lang 侯錦郎, 106n16 Houhanshu 後漢書 (History of the Later Han), 109n49 Hu Pingsheng 胡平生, 112n57 Hu Shi 胡適 (1891–1962), 85, 104, 105n2 Huainanzi 淮南子, 7, 109n49, 225–246

305

Huan Maoyong 宦懋庸 (1842–1892), 183 Huan Tan 桓譚 (d. ca. 32 c.e.), 184 Huangquan 黃泉 (Yellow Spring), 18–19, 25, 96, 109n49, 118 huasheng 化生 (transmutation), 129–130 Hui Jiao 慧皎 (497–554), 280 human sacrifice. See under sacrifice idealism, 251, 254, 288 immortality, as human need, 250–251, 254, 264, 265 indebtedness, in parent-child relationship, 162–164, 167, 171, 174n20, 175n31 Ivanhoe, Philip J., 159, 193, 219, 221n34, 223n45 jade closure or jade disc. See yubi 玉閉, 玉壁 James, William (1842–1910), 250–256, 264–267; on benefits of belief in afterlife, 8, 250–256; on cultural persistence and common sense, 119– 121; on development of identity, 164; “Human Immortality” lecture, 250–256; and metaphysics, 265–267; Varieties of Religious Experience, 252, 253, 266; Will to Believe, 253, 254 Jia Yanhong 賈艷紅, 180 Jiangling 江陵, Hubei, 92, 97, 105n10 Jiao Hong 焦竑 (1540–1620), 274–275 Jingzhou 荊州, Hubei, 98, 178 Jochim, Chris, 223n45, 224n58 justice: and afterlife (see under afterlife); and the Dao, 244; and Daoism, 246; and death, 178, 186; and ghosts, 238–240, 243, 246; and Tian 天 (Heaven), 238–240, 243, 244; and tianming (Mandate of Heaven), 185, 187–188; in zhiguai (anomaly tales), 33 Kasulis, Thomas, 265–267, 269n31 Keightly, David N., 1, 118, 121–122 Kierkegaard, Søren (1813–1855), 145

306

INDEX

Kjellberg, Paul, 193 Kleeman, Terry F., 97–98 Kong An’guo 孔安國, 182 Kongzi: on afterlife, 139, 142, 148nn5– 6; and daotong 道統 (transmission of the Way), 183; on death, 139–142, 154–172, 271, 284–286, 289; death of, 143–144; and deaths of disciples, 139–142, 146, 149n21, 158, 173n10, 173n13, 178, 180–185, 190n21, 202; on ghosts, 148n5; on grave goods, 29; and grief, 182, 196–200; on justice, 146; on ming 命 (allotment of life), 178, 180–187, 202; on mortality, 138–147, 159–160; on mourning, 140–141, 148n10, 149n13, 155, 162, 167, 234; on parent-child relationship, 160–165; on ritual, 166–167, 234; as sage-king, 183–185, 189n17; on self, 162; on social class, 144. See also Analects; Confucianism Kübler-Ross, Elisabeth (1926–2004), 219n9 Lai Guo-long 來國龍, 92, 108n45 language: and philosophy, 120; skepticism about, 191, 217–218 Lao Siguang 勞思光, 224n58 Laozi. See Daodejing 道德經 Legge, James (1815–1897), 142 Li Jiahao 李家浩, 112n57 Li Jian’an 李漸庵, 284 Li Jianmao 李建毛, 77n4 Li Zehou 李澤厚, 4, 123, 125, 127 Liezi 列子, 109n49 life: distinguished from longevity, 205; good or well-lived, 5, 8, 128, 138, 140–143, 145–147, 149n19, 150n27, 150n29, 154; mortality and understanding of, 132, 137, 142; nurturing, 207; as undesirable or dangerous, 193–194, 257; as unity with death, 192, 194, 200–201, 228–229 lifespan. See ming 命 Liji 禮記 (Book of Rites), 29, 107n19, 179, 240, 241, 243

lineages, 230 Linji 臨濟 (9th century c.e.), 8, 256–267 Liu An 劉安 (2nd century b.c.e.), 243 Liu Baonan 劉寶楠 (1791–1855), 184 Liu Gao 劉塙, 283, 292n7 Liu Guosheng 劉國勝, 112n57 Liu Kui 劉魁 (1488–1552), 281 Liu Xinfang 劉信芳, 110n51, 112n57 Liu Zhaorui 劉昭瑞, 112n57 Liu Zongyi 劉宗意, 82n72 Liu Zongzhou 劉宗周 (1578–1645), 288–289, 290–291 Loewe, Michael, 82n80, 89–90, 106n16, 107n28, 108n42 longevity, 53–62, 66, 69, 75, 157, 187, 204–207, 244, 275 Lu Xiqi 魯西奇, 115n73 Lucretius (1st century b.c.e.), 149n14 Luo Kun 羅琨, 82n72 Luo Rufeng 羅汝芳 (1515–1588), 277–278, 292n7 Luoyang 洛陽, Henan, 91 Ma Jixing 馬繼興, 81n57 Ma Rong 馬融 (79–166 c.e.) macrobiotic practices, 52–53, 60–62, 64–65, 67, 73. See also breath cultivation; ejaculation, control of magicians. See fangshi方士 mai 脈 (anatomical vessels), 63 Major, John, 227 Makeham, John, 186 Mancheng 滿城, Henan, 16 Mandate of Heaven. See tianming 天命 Marcus Aurelius (2nd century c.e.), 148n7 Maslow, Abraham (1908–1970), 223n45 master of dreams. See zhangmeng 掌夢 material culture, compared to texts. See under tombs materialism, 262, 290 Mawangdui 馬王堆 medical texts: 49–50, 51–56, 58, 60–62, 63, 73, 75, 79n33

INDEX Mawangdui 馬王堆 tombs: depiction of afterlife in, 21–22, 37–77, 88–92, 93–95, 104–105; gaodi texts in, 97 Mazu Daoyi 馬祖道一, 258 medical texts. See Mawangdui medical texts meliorism, 255 memory: in Confucianism, 223n44; and death, 131. See also forgetfulness Mengzi 孟子 (Mencius), 120–121, 148n10, 184, 189nn13–14, 203, 212, 220n19, 221n31, 234 metaphysical realism, 119, 134n9 metaphysics, 254, 265–267, 269n31 metapraxis, 265–267, 269n31 methodology, 9–10, 95, 120–121 mind: definitions of, 192, 294n31; and death, 283, 285, 287, 291; dualistic, 282; “fasting of,” 193, 210, 217, 222n43; ordinary, 258; transformations of, 192–193, 217. See also mind-heart; xin 心. See also rationality mind-heart: 192–193, 281–285, 289, 291, 294n31. See also mind; xin 心 mindfulness, 262, 264 mingqi 明器 (spiritual vessels), 29–30. See also under tombs mingshi 名世 (worthies), 184–185 ming 命 (allotment of life; fate), 177–188; avoidance of harm in order to fulfill, 191, 204–207, 214, 221nn30–31; in Daoism, 131–132, 179; defined, 6, 188n1; and human agency, 6, 178–180, 185–187; and justice, 186; Kongzi on, 142, 178, 180–185; and nature, 204; purpose of belief in, 178, 190n21; as random, 177–178, 180–182, 185–188, 190n21, 192; sages’ understanding of, 229; sanming 三命 (three kinds of allotment), 187; and self-cultivation, 186, 189n18; of state, 179; and timeliness, 186, 189n13; Zhuangzi on, 7, 192, 201. For the associated deity, see shen 神: Siming moon, as symbol of rebirth, 57 Mori Mikisaburo, 194

307

mortality: Confucian (early) understanding of, 5, 159–160; Daoist understandings of, 6–8; denial of, 137–139, 157; diversity of understandings of, 1–2, 154; NeoConfucian understanding of, 271– 202; non-Chinese understandings of, 1, 118, 137–139, 148n7, 273–274; ritual responses to, 5; and self, 219n11; and self-cultivation, 5, 9, 140, 277; whether tragic, 159; and understanding of life, 132, 137, 142–143, 145, 149n18, 160; warfare and understanding of, 4–5, 114–124. See also immortality Mother Star. See Nüqi Mount Fu, 105n10 Mount Kunlun 崑崙山: depictions of, 47, 55, 81n55, 84n112; as intermediate destination of soul, 38, 55–56, 71–75, 106n16; and macrobiotic practices, 73 Mount Tai 泰山: as location of afterlife, 20–21, 90–91, 107n27 mourning: appropriate vs. excessive, 140–141, 145, 148n10, 149n13, 154, 155, 162, 167, 173n7, 174n21, 234; Daoist critique of, 6–7; distinguished from grief, 155–156, 173n7; for parents, 155; purpose of, 175n30; ritual, 6–7. See also grief Mozi 墨子, 110n49, 181, 186, 234, 238–241, 243, 244, 245 Myers, Gerald, 253, 254, 268n13 mystical experiences, 252, 255, 256 Na¯ga¯rjuna, 269n23 Nagel, Thomas, 149n14 names: personal, 130; rectification of (zhengming 正名), 189n14 nature: cycle of, 192, 207–209, 216–217; dangers of, 226–227, 237; definitions of, 203–204; and death, 192, 207–209, 217; harmony with, 209, 218; human (xing 性), 203–204, 220n26; as the only world, 86; non-Chinese understandings of, 124, 223n51

308

INDEX

Needham, Joseph (1900–1995), 85–86, 104, 124 Neo-Confucianism, 271–292; attention to issues of life and death, 8–9, 273– 279; dialogue with Buddhism, 8–9, 274, 279–280, 281–286; dialogue with Daoism, 274; an liberation from death, 281–292;and political violence, 280–281; and qi 氣, 287–288, 291; and the self, 283–284, 290; Taizhou School, 292n7. See also Confucianism; Wang Yangming Nie Bao 聶豹 (1487–1563), 281 Nietzsche, Friedrich (1844–1900), 120 nirvana, 286, 290 Nivison, David, 199–200 nonsages, 230, 237, 238, 245, 246 Nüqi 女岐 (Mother Star), 58, 82n74 Nüwa女媧, 21–22, 58 omens, 182, 189n17 ontology, 272, 286–291 oracle-bone inscriptions: 18, 23, 96, 121–122 order: in Chinese thought, 124; ghosts as agents of, 8; grief as support for, 161; parents as symbols of, 154; parent-child relationship and, 174nn16–17, 175n27 “origin, the,” as destination of soul, 58 other worlds, 43–44, 45, 85–86, 96, 128, 251–252, 255, 257–259, 286. See also afterlife paisheng 派生 (derivation), 129–130 Pang Pu 庞朴, 129 parent, death of. See under death parent-child relationship, 6, 160–167, 174nn16–18, 174n20, 174n24, 175n25, 175n31, 241 patterns, cosmic, 7, 124 Penglai Island, 106n16 perspectivism. See under Zhuangzi Pihlström, Sami, 253–254, 255 Platonism, 120, 122–123, 134n9, 211 poetry, 274

politics, 3, 9, 15, 102, 126–127, 154, 161, 188, 206, 221n30, 221n38, 280–281 Poo Mu-chou 蒲慕州, 87–88, 187–188 pragmatism, 8, 249–267; assumptions underlying, 264; and Buddhism, 249–250 process. See flux procreation: in funereal art, 49–53 Proudfoot, Wayne, 253 Pure Land, 286 Qi Liang 啓良, 79n33 qi 氣 (vapors; energy), 51–55, 60–64, 67, 70, 74, 211, 214, 222n43, 233, 240, 287–288, 291 Qian Dehong 錢德洪 (1496–1554), 280 Qianfu lun 縴夫論, 109n49 qianren 鉛人 (men of lead), 27 Queen Mother of the West. See shen 神: Xiwangmu西王母 rationality: and the Dao, 191, 200–201, 203, 204–206, 209, 212–215, 218, 220n26, 224n58; positive aspects of, 213–214; and skepticism, 193. See also mind realism: Confucianism and, 288; metaphysical, 119, 134n9 re-awakening. See fusu 復蘇 rebirth: in Daoism, 86. See also fusu 復蘇 (soul-summoning ritual); samsara (cycle of life and death) Records of the Historian. See Shiji 史記 registration system, 101, 111n57 relationships. See death: effect on the living; parent-child relationship; self: defined by relationships relativism, ethical, 203, 217. See also under culture ren 人 (the human): as distinct from Tian 天, 211–213, 217–218 reproduction (human), 244–245 resurrection, 97 Richards, I. A. (1893–1979), 120–121

INDEX rishu 日書 (daybooks), 92 Rites of Zhou. See Zhouli 周禮 ritual: compared to material culture of tombs (see under texts); Daoist critique of, 6–7; diversity of, 24; following vs. transgressing bounds of, 198; funerary, 22–28, 42–45; items/ vessels in tombs (see under tombs); historical sources for, 42–44; Kongzi on, 166–167; lishi 立尸 (living child stands in for the deceased), 23; as magic, 166–167; mourning, 6; whether natural, 220n19; origins of, 231–232, 234, 237; and parentchild relationship, 166–167; for premature death, 26; purposes of, 24, 27–28, 175n30, 234–242; responses to mortality, 5; sages and, 230–234; and social status/class, 23–24; soulsummoning (see fu 復); specialists (see shangzhu 商祝); texts, 22–28; universality of, 235; Zhuangzi on, 198, 208–209. See also mourning; sacrifice Romanticism, 215 Royce, Josiah, 150n29 Ruan Ji 阮籍 (3rd century c.e.), 133n5 sacrifice: to ancestors (see ancestor worship); animal, 22–23, 28; efficacy of, 227, 242; to ghosts, 225–227; to household objects, 235; human, 18, 22–23, 28; to natural objects, 235–236; by nonsages, 244–245, 246; origins of, 245; reasons for, 227, 235–242; to spirits, 226–227. See also ritual sage-kings, 183–185 sages, 225–246; and afterlife, 229, 238, 242; autonomy of, 230–234, 238, 242–246; control of nonsages, 237, 238; as creators, 231–241; and the Dao, 232–233, 242; and fear of death, 274–277; and ghosts, 230, 236; and ritual, 230; and self, 228; self-cultivation, 237, 242, 243;

309

self-divinization, 229–230, 242, 243, 244, 246; taking Heaven and Earth as parents, 228; understandings of afterlife by, 7, 229; understanding of ming 命 (allotment of life) by, 229. See also nonsages; True Man samsara (cycle of life and death), 275, 282, 286, 290 Saso, Michael, 222n43 Schafer, Edward, 84n113, 108n35 Schwartz, Benjamin, 188n1, 211, 222n43 science, 124–125, 252–253, 255–256 Seidel, Anna, 94, 97–98, 101, 109n46 self: and the body, 224n58; and the brain, 252; in Buddhism, 222n41, 259, 262, 275, 287; Confucian understandings of, 222n41, 283–284, 287, 290; in Daoism, 275; defined by relationships, 128, 141, 143, 163–166, 168, 195; definitions, 259; and finiteness, 252; loss of individual identity after death, 58; and mortality, 219n11, 287; and nature, 290; and sages, 228; sense of, 7; as “shen 神” (spirit), 224n58; Zhuangzi’s skepticism about, 203–204, 209–211, 217, 221n41 self-cultivation: and contact with spirits, 237; and good death, 277; and grief, 156, 161; and ming 命 (allotment of life), 186, 189n18; and mortality, 5, 9, 140, 288; and sages, 237, 242, 243; Zhuangzi on, 203 self-divinization, 229–230, 242, 243, 244, 246. See also deification Seneca (1st century c.e.), 148n7 sexuality: and life and death, 51–53, 55, 75. See also ejaculation; reproduction shaman. See wu 巫 Shang Zhitan 商志覃, 80n48 Shangdi 上帝 (God on High), 96 shangzhu 商祝 (ritual specialists), 42 shen 神 (spirits and deities): body as, 224n58; bureaucracy among, 180;

310

INDEX

shen (continued) dangerous, 226–227; Daoist, 179, 205; whether dangerous, 238; Di 帝 (highest deity), 18; distinguished from gui 鬼 (ghosts), 77n4; Dizhu 地主 (Lord of the Earth), 97; Fengshi 飌師 (Master of Wind), 179; god of longevity, 205; Gongsun Qiang 公孫強(Clerk for Siming), 179; Huangdi 黃帝 (Yellow Emperor, ruler of underground), 20; Huangshen 黃神 (Yellow God), 20, 27; human spirit, 225–226; origins of, 236; sacrifice to, 226–227; Sihuo 司禍 (Manager of Misfortunes), 178; Silu 司祿, 105n2; Siming 司命 (Master/Manager of Allotments/Fate), 105n2, 110n50, 178–180, 188n7; Simingshi 司命史 (Scribe of Siming), 97; Sizhong 司中 (Manager of the Center), 179; Tian 天 (Heaven) (see Tian [deity]); Tiandi 天帝 (Heavenly Emperor), 20, 102, 103, 107n27; Tu Bo 土伯 (Lord Earth; Earth God), 19, 43, 49, 110n49; Xiwangmu 西王母 (Queen Mother of the West), 91, 92, 94, 109n46; Yushi 雨師 (Master of Rain), 179. See also deification shen ming 神明 (spiritual illumniation), 54 shengqi 生器 (articles of life, of everyday use), 29–30. See also under tombs shi 勢 (circumstances; military advantage), 125–127 shi 筮 (geomantic augurs), 42 Shiji 史記 (Records of the Historian), 31, 114n69 Shijing 詩經 (Book of Odes), 18, 23 Shujing 書經 or Shangshu 尚書 (Book of History; Book of Documents), 20, 185 Shuoyuan 說苑, 109n49 Silbergeld, Jerome, 77n7 Siming 司命. See under shen 神 Sivin, Nathan, 119

skepticism, 193, 203, 217. See also under afterlife; language; self; Zhuangzi Slingerland, Ted, 189n18 Slote, Michael, 145 social mobility, effect of on understandings of afterlife, 17 social status/class: and afterlife, 8, 18, 100–101; and burial practices, 3, 14–15, 17, 23–24, 30–31, 95, 113n60, 113n63; purpose of, 144; shi 士 (gentlemen), 23; soldiers, 118 Song Yu 宋玉, 85 soul: definitions, 46, 76; hun 魂, 25–26, 27, 45, 61, 78n26, 79n33, 88, 92, 106nn12–13, 107n28, 109n46, 225, 229, 247n2; location of, after death, 18–21, 25–26, 30, 37–77, 88, 105n10, 106n13, 106n16, 107n28, 247n2; loss of individual identity, 59; po 魄, 25–26, 27, 78n26, 79n33, 88, 92, 95, 106nn12–13, 107n28, 109n46, 225, 229, 240, 247n2; reunification of hun and po, 90 soul-summoning ritual. See fu 復 Spinoza, Baruch (1632–1677), 148n7 spiritual illumination. See shen ming 神明 spontaneity, 214–215 stars, 58, 60, 81n72, 180, 188n5 Stoicism, 148n7 Sufukawa Hiroshi, 106n16 Suizhou 隨州, Hubei, 97 Sun Bin 孫臏, 126 Sunzi 孫子, 4–5, 118, 123, 135n29 Swedenborgianism, 251 Taipingjing 太平經 (Scripture of Great Peace), 90, 110n49 Taiyi 太一 (the Grand One), 49, 58, 79n29, 81n68 Takahashi Shinkichi, 264 Tang Junyi 唐君毅, 128 Tao Wangling 陶望齡 (1562–1609), 292n7 taxation: in afterlife, 27, 100

INDEX temporality, 201–202, 210, 216–217, 224n58 texts: compared to material culture 3– 4, 38–41, 44, 62, 75–76, 77n7; gaodi 告地 (informing-the-underground), 4, 87, 96–105, 111n57; ritual, 22– 28; tomb-quelling (see zhenmuwen 鎮墓文); in tombs, 4, 25, 27, 32–33. See also Mawangdui medical texts theodicy, 181, 187 Tian 天 (deity) (Heaven): definitions of, 189n18, 203–204; as distinct from ren 人 (the human), 211–213, 217–218; and individual nature, 198; and justice, 238–240, 243, 244; and Kongzi, 181–182; and ming 命 (allotment of life), 181–182, 186; as nature, 203–204, 211, 223n51; and sages and worthies, 184–185, 211, 228 Tiangong 天公 (Heavenly Sire), 25 tianjiang 天漿 (heavenly beverage), 53–56, 61 tianming 天命 (Mandate of Heaven), 20; and justice, 185, 187–188; and lifespan, 182 tombs: archaeology of, 2–4; brick, 15, 93; chariots in, 91–92; doublecross, 16; feasts at, 226; as house or home, 3, 4, 15–17, 22, 38, 43, 45, 76, 91–92, 93–96, 104–105, 107n28, 109n46, 130, 226, 247n2; items of everyday use in, 16, 29–30, 78n26, 93, 94, 100, 108n45, 130, 226; as location of po 魄 soul, 92, 95; mannekins (qianren 鉛人 [men of lead]) in, 27; material culture of, compared to texts and rituals (see under texts); ritual items in, 14, 29–30, 93; rock-cut cave, 16–17; surrogate objects in, 16, 27, 28–31; texts in, 4, 25, 27, 96–105, 111n57; types, 14–17, 31, 93, 104, 108n37; vertical-pit, 14–15, 16, 93; visual arts in, 3–4, 15, 21–22, 32, 37–77; waist pit, 22. See also burial practices; coffins

311

transcendence, 198, 203, 211–212, 223nn50–51, 243, 283, 286, 288 True Man (zhenren 真人), 230, 237–238 true person with no rank. See wuwei zhenren 無位真人 underground. See dixia 地下 Van Norden, Bryan, 203, 217 vapors. See qi 氣 vessels, anatomical. See mai脈 visual arts. See under tombs Wang Chong 王充 (27–ca. 100 c.e.), 28 Wang Gen 王艮 (1483–1540), 277–278 Wang Ji 王畿 (1498–1583), 273, 277, 280, 282–283, 284–286 Wang Yangming 王陽明 (1472–1529): death of, 279; enlightenment at Longchang, 277, 280; understandings of mortality, 274, 281–282; understandings of mortality by followers of, 9, 271–292 warfare: and correlative thinking, 4–5, 122–127; and understanding of mortality, 4–5, 122–127 Wei Liangbi 魏良弼 (1492–1575), 281 Wei River, as symbol of death, 91 Williams, Bernard, 149n18 Wolf, Arthur, 102 worthies. See mingshi 名世 Wright, Dale, 261, 265 wu 無 (detachment), 272, 286–288, 291 wu 復 (shaman), 22–23, 24–25 Wu Hung 巫鴻, 91–92, 93–94, 107n28, 108n37, 108n42 Wu Yi 武夷 (deity), 26 wucang 五藏 (five depots), 53, 61, 63 wuwei 無爲 (nonaction; effortless or nonintentional action), 204, 208, 217, 220n26, 257, 269n21 wuwei zhenren 無位真人 (true person with no rank), 257

312

INDEX

xian 仙 (immortals), 90, 96, 109n46 Xiang’er 想爾 commentary to Daodejing, 243–246 Xiao Hui, 281–282 Xiao Yan 肖彥 (fl. 1589), 277 Ximing 西銘 (Western Inscription), 272 xin 心 (mind-heart, etc.): definitions of, 294n31. See also mind; mind-heart xing 性 (human nature), 203–204, 220n26, 285 Xiwangmu 西王母 (Queen Mother of the West). See under shen Xu Yongjian 徐用檢 (1529–1611), 285–286 xuchui 呴吹. See breath cultivation Xunzi 荀子, 24, 109n49, 126, 186, 189n13, 203, 212, 220n19, 223n51 Yan Yuan 顏淵 (Yan Hui 顏回), death of, 6, 146, 149n21, 173n10, 173n13, 181–185, 189n17, 190n21, 202; on death, 158; as successor to Kongzi, 183, 189n9 Yanagida Seizan, 258 Yang Qiyuan 楊起元 (1547–1599), 275–276 Yang Zhu (5th–4th centuries b.c.e.), 220n28 Yangzi, 234 Yearley, Lee, 211, 221n37 Yellow Emperor. See shen 神: Huangdi 黃帝 Yellow God. See shen 神: Huangshen 黃神 Yijing 易經 (Book of Changes): 122, 125, 128, 129, 287 Yili 儀禮 (Book of Ceremonies; Etiquette and Rites), 23, 107n19 yin and yang 陰陽: and body, 62–67, 69–70, 74; in correlative thinking, 122; and harmony, 233–234; and heaven and earth, 64; as origin of humans, 48–51; and revival of life, 56–57, 62–67, 69–70; and sexuality, 52–53; and hun/po 魂魄 souls, 88 Ying Shao 應劭 (fl. 189–194 c.e.), 81n63, 179–180

you 有 (existence), 272, 286–288, 291 Youdu 幽都 (Dark City), 18–19, 96, 110n49 “Yu bu” 禹步 (“Pace of Yu”), 92 Yu Ying-shih 余英時, 86, 87, 89–90, 107n19, 107n28, 108n42 yubi 玉閉, 玉壁 (jade closure, jade disc), 47, 54–56, 70, 75, 80n52 Zeng Zi 曾子 (505–436 b.c.e.), 278–279 Zha Duo 查鐸 (1516–1589), 277 Zhang Longxi 張隆溪, 133n2 Zhang Zai 張載 (1020–1077), 272, 276 zhangmeng 掌夢 (master of dreams), 42 Zhao Qi 趙岐, 184 zhengming 正名 (rectification of names), 189n14 zhenmuwen 鎮墓文 (tomb-quelling texts), 98, 100, 101, 103, 113n61, 115n73 zhenren 真人 (True Man), 230, 237–238 zhi 智 (intelligence), 220n26. See also rationality zhiguai 志怪 (anomaly tales), 33 Zhou Rudeng 周汝登 (1547–1629), 273, 283, 285–286 Zhouli 周禮 (Rites of Zhou), 106n13, 114n69, 178–180 Zhu Xi 朱熹 (1130–1200), 183, 271 zhuan 傳 (passports), 114n69 Zhuangzi, 191–218; on afterlife, 109n49, 110n49, 192, 193-194; authorship of Zhuangzi, 218n1; on benevolence, 207, 221n34; on change and flux, 192, 194–202, 206–209; on the Dao, 192; as Daoist, 218n1; on death, 144–145, 149n21, 150nn23–24, 191–192, 194–202; on emotion, 195, 215, 223n55; on grief, 195, 196–200, 215–216; and human nature, 203; influence on Huainanzi, 228, 229–230; and mind(-heart), 192–193, 217; on ming 命 (allotment of life), 192, 201, 204–207; on mortality, 2, 7, 132, 133n4; on

INDEX nature, 144, 194–204, 209, 217, 223n51; as perspectivist, 191, 202; practices, 192–193, 210, 218, 222n43; on ritual, 198, 208–209; and the self, 7, 197, 203–204, 209–211, 218, 222n41; and skepticism, 193, 217; skepticism about language, 191, 218; on spontaneity, 214–215; on temporality, 201–202, 210, 216–217

313

Zi Gong 子貢, 286 Zichan 子產 (6th century b.c.e.), 106n12 ziran 自然 (so of itself), 127, 204, 217, 220n26 Zou Yuanbiao鄒元標 (1551–1624), 283 Zuozhuan 左傳 (Zuo’s Tradition; Commentary of Zuo), 18–19, 106n12, 109n49, 185

ASIAN STUDIES / EASTERN THOUGHT

Mortality in Traditional Chinese Thought is the definitive exploration of a complex and fascinating but little-understood subject. Arguably, death as a concept has not been nearly as central a preoccupation in Chinese culture as it has been in the West. However, even in a society that seems to understand death as a part of life, responses to mortality are revealing and indicate much about what is valued and what is feared. This edited volume fills the lacuna on this subject, presenting an array of philosophical, artistic, historical, and religious perspectives on death during a variety of historical periods. Contributors look at material culture, including findings now available from the Mawangdui tomb excavations; consider death in Confucian, Daoist, and Buddhist traditions; and discuss death and the history and philosophy of war. AMY OLBERDING is Associate Professor of Philosophy at the University of Oklahoma. PHILIP J. IVANHOE is Reader-Professor of Philosophy at the City

University of Hong Kong. His many books include Religious and Philosophical Aspects of the Laozi (coedited with Mark Csikszentmihalyi) and Essays on Skepticism, Relativism, and Ethics in the Zhuangzi (coedited with Paul Kjellberg), both also published by SUNY Press. A volume in the SUNY series in Chinese Philosophy and Culture Roger T. Ames, editor

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State University of New York Press www.sunypress.edu