The Huainanzi

by An Liu

  Summary and Key Themes

  For the authors of the Huainanzi, because everything in Heaven and on Earth is both natural and supernatural, secular and sacred, the natures and patterns that constitute them attain a normative prominence often unfamiliar to us in the West. That is, these patterns, sequences, propensities, and natures are themselves divine. They are the basis through which all the multitudinous phenomena in the world adhere and function in harmony and, as such, serve as the models and standards for the communities of human beings who are an integral part of this order. Thus Nature is holy in and of itself—to be respected, adhered to, and even worshiped. According to the authors of this chapter, human beings can either ignore this normative natural order and fail in their endeavors, or they can follow it and succeed.

  The sage-kings referred to in section 1.4, Feng Yi and Da Bing , are portrayed as having been the first to recognize this and to rule the cosmos by following the natural tendencies of phenomena and the patterns of their activities. Human beings cannot succeed by opposing these fundamental principles of the natural world. In order to govern effectively, the ruler must model himself on these sage-kings and develop the wisdom to discern these principles and then not interfere with how the myriad things follow them. Unfortunately, human beings tend to fall away from this normative natural order and lose their spontaneous functioning. The senses’ desire for sense objects generates preferences and enticements, and people become so obsessed with them that they lose touch with their innate nature and natural spontaneity. Humans must learn to get back in touch with their natural and spontaneous side, for it is that part of them that is directly connected to the normative patterns through which the Way subtly guides the spontaneous self-generation of all things. Inner cultivation is the primary way in which human beings can realize the deepest aspects of their intrinsic nature, that part of their being that is directly in touch with the Way and, through it, with the inherent patterns and structures of the universe.

  The universe is thus described as a “spiritlike vessel” (shen qi ), made up of the various innate natures (xing ) of things that determine their course of development and their actions and of the great patterns (li ) inherent in the cosmos that govern the characteristic ways in which things interact with one another. These natures and patterns are thoroughly infused with the empty Way, which mysteriously guides their spontaneous processes of development and their daily activities. This entire complex world functions completely spontaneously and harmoniously and needs nothing additional from human beings. All sages need to do is recognize these natures and patterns and adapt to them. It is because of this normative order that sages can accomplish everything without exerting their individual will to control things. In other words, they practice “non-action” (wuwei ), which is effective because of the existence of this normative natural order. Sages cultivate themselves through the “Techniques of the Mind” (xin shu ) in order to fully realize the basis of this order within.4 By realizing the Way at the basis of their innate nature, sages can simultaneously realize the intrinsic natures of all phenomena.

  These interlocking ideas of order and structure in the universe as the foundation for non-action and sagely government are well summarized in section 1.9:

  Sages internally cultivate the root [of the Way within them]

  and do not externally adorn themselves with its branches.

  They protect their Quintessential Spirit and

  dispense with wisdom and precedent.

  In stillness they take no deliberate action, yet there is nothing left undone.

  In tranquillity they do not try to govern, but nothing is left ungoverned.

  What we call “no deliberate action” is to not anticipate the activity of things.

  What we call “nothing left undone” means to adapt to what things have [already] done.

  What we call “to not govern” means to not change how things are naturally so.

  What we call “nothing left ungoverned” means to adapt to how things are mutually so.

  Thus, as section 1.5 states:

  The affairs of the world cannot be deliberately controlled.

  You must draw them out by following their natural direction.

  The alterations of the myriad things cannot be fathomed.

  You must grasp their essential tendencies and guide them to their homes.

  The inner cultivation through which sages are able to realize the Way and practice non-action entails the systematic elimination of the emotions, distractions, desires, preferences, thoughts, deliberations, and attachments to the sense-objects that usually flood the conscious mind. Through this, one may break through to the level of “spiritlike illumination” (shenming ) and realize what lies deep within the innermost core of one’s being, the one Way. Realizing this yields a profound and lasting contentment much greater than the fleeting pleasures of the senses. It also is conceived of as preserving the inherent balance among the functioning of the four basic aspects of human beings: physical body (xing ), vital energy or breath (qi ), spirit (shen ), and will or attention (zhi ), which are part of the normative natural order that exists in human beings. Cluttering consciousness with lusts and desires disrupts this balance. The antidote for this is inner cultivation practice, which cleanses the mind and thus gradually restores the inherent balance among these activities. Thus by practicing inner cultivation that calms mind and body and yields a deep state of tranquillity, sages enable the four basic aspects of their beings to function spontaneously and harmoniously in accordance with their inherent natural patterns. This then allows them to align with the “heavenly dynamism” (tianji ), the normative natural order of which they are an integral part and thus act completely in accordance with the Way.

  Another benefit of realizing the Way within is that those who do so can avoid the disasters associated with acting before the correct moment in time. When they detect that moment, they act spontaneously in response to it and are said to follow it and not anticipate it. This chapter contains an intricate matrix of interacting temporal sequences and natural patterns that guide the spontaneous responses arising from the natures of all phenomena. All these elements constitute the normative natural order, and failure to act in accordance with it will result in personal failure and, at times, natural disasters.

  The authors of “Originating in the Way” also use the metaphor of water to express the most important aspects of this normative order. Water moves and acts as the Way does. It is both something from which we can learn about how the Way works in the world and a normative model for how the sages act. When they encounter difficulties, sages do not meet them with force but rather with a mental attitude based on the model of the persistent weakness of water. This is a quality of mind to be cultivated and is related to the notions of suppleness, pliancy, non-striving, and non-assertiveness. It is through this normative model of water that we can, as the Laozi says, understand the benefits of acting without asserting the human will over and against the patterns of nature (tianli ). The benefits of water are extolled in section 1.12:

  Therefore,

  without being partial or impartial, gushing and undulating, it totally merges with Heaven and Earth.

  Without favoring the left or the right, coiling and swirling, it ends and begins with the myriad things.

  This is what we call “Perfect Potency.”

  The reason that water is able to achieve its Perfect Potency within the entire world is that it is gentle and soaking, moist and slippery. Thus, in the words of Lao Dan:

  The most pliant things in the world

  ride roughshod over the most rigid.

  [This is because] they emerge from the Nonexistent

  and enter into the Seamless.

  I thereby understand the benefits of taking no action.

  Sources

  The principal source for this chapter is the Laozi. It is the inspiration for the chapter’s poetic rhapsodies on the Way and its vision of applying inner cultivation
to governing. This chapter also shares its thought with the similarly entitled “Dao yuan” (The Source That Is the Way) essay that is part of the Mawangdui Huang-Lao silk manuscripts.5 In its presentation of self-cultivation, “Originating in the Way” shares much of its language with the four works on “Techniques of the Mind” assembled in the Guanzi.6 Its discussion of water as a metaphor for the Way comes from the Laozi and also perhaps from the Taiyi sheng shui (The Grand One Generates Water) text excavated at Guodian.7

  The Chapter in the Context of the Huainanzi as a Whole

  Coming at the beginning of the entire work, “Originating in the Way” establishes important elements of the philosophical framework in which the rest of the text functions. “An Overview of the Essentials,” the concluding chapter of the Huainanzi, attributes to this chapter the ability to

  [begin with] the six coordinates contracted and

  compressed and the myriad things chaotic and confused.

  [It then] diagrams the features of the Grand One

  and fathoms the depths of the Dark Unseen,

  thereby soaring beyond the frame of Empty Nothingness.

  By relying on the small, it embraces the great;

  by guarding the contracted, it orders the expansive.

  It enables you to understand

  the bad or good fortune of taking the lead or following behind

  and the benefit or harm of taking action or remaining still

  If you sincerely comprehend its import, floodlike, you can achieve a grand vision. (21.2)

  It thus ascribes to this first chapter an all-inclusive wisdom that provides the foundation for the rest of the book. In some important ways, “Originating in the Way” also is a parallel work to the second chapter, “Activating the Genuine,” for which the Zhuangzi is the major influence.

  The major themes in this chapter that occur in various combinations and contexts throughout the rest of the book are as follows: (1) the cosmology of the Way and its Potency; (2) the general framework for how the Way works in the world through the innate natures and propensities of things and through the natural patterns that form the structures through which things interact, thus forming a harmonious world order; (3) the basic theory that because of this order and structure, sages can act efficaciously in the world through non-action, a state of mind, and its derivative laissez-faire principle that leaving things alone allows them to spontaneously and harmoniously develop and interact; and (4) the theory that this state of mind can be developed through apophatic inner-cultivation practices.

  Harold D. Roth

  1. For details on these texts and their relationships, see Harold D. Roth, “Psychology and Self-Cultivation in Early Taoistic Thought,” Harvard Journal of Asiatic Studies 51, no. 2 (1991): 599–650; “Who Compiled the Chuang Tzu?” in Chinese Texts and Philosophical Contexts: Essays Dedicated to Angus C. Graham, ed. Henry Rosemont Jr. (LaSalle, Ill.: Open Court Press, 1991), 78–128; and “Redaction Criticism and the Early History of Taoism,” Early China 19 (1994): 1–46.

  2. Roger T. Ames and D. C. Lau, Yuan Dao: Tracing Dao to Its Source (New York: Ballantine Books, 1998). Ames 1994, 14, earlier translated this title as “Tracing the Dao.” Csikszentmihalyi 2004, 45, 102n.2, renders it variously as “Finding the Source of the Way” and “Origin of the Tao.” For other versions of the chapter title, see the translations listed in app. C.

  3. “Apophatic” refers to methods of self-transformative practice that involve the “forgetting” or negation of common dualistic categories of knowledge and experience. “Inner cultivation” is the term I use to refer to the apophatic practices of emptying the mind in order to realize the Way that are found in all early Daoist works. For details, see Harold D. Roth, “The Inner Cultivation Tradition of Early Daoism,” in The Religions of China in Practice, ed. Donald Lopez and Stephen Teiser (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1995), 123–48; “Evidence for Stages of Meditation in Early Taoism,” Bulletin of the School of Oriental and African Studies 60, no. 2 (1997): 295–314; and Original Tao: Inward Training and the Foundations of Taoist Mysticism (New York: Columbia University Press, 1999), 7–9 and passim.

  4. The “Techniques of the Mind” is the title of two short texts in the seventy-six-text Guanzi compendium. Together with “Inward Training” and “The Purified Mind,” they constitute a group that in modern scholarship is referred to as the four “Techniques of Mind” works. By the time of the Huainanzi, this phrase was probably used as a general term for what I have called “inner cultivation” practice. For details, see Roth, Original Tao, 15–30.

  5. For a translation, see Harold D. Roth and Sarah A. Queen, “Syncretic Visions of State, Society, and Cosmos,” in Sources of Chinese Tradition, ed. Wm. Theodore de Bary and Irene Bloom, rev. ed. (New York: Columbia University Press, 1999), 252–56. For a translation and analysis of this text and the other silk manuscripts, see Robin D. S. Yates, Five Lost Classics: Tao, Huang-lao, and Yin-yang in Han China (New York: Ballantine Books, 1997), 171–77.

  6. For details of these works and their ideas on self-cultivation, see Roth, “Redaction Criticism and the Early History of Taoism.”

  7. For the text and a preliminary discussion of this short but important work, see “Other Texts and the Question of Philosophical Schools,” 162–71, and Edmund Ryden, “Edition of the Bamboo-Slip Laozi A, B, and C, and Tai yi sheng shui from Guodian Tomb Number One,” 228–31, both in The Guodian Laozi: Proceedings of the International Conference, ed. Sarah Allan and Crispin Williams, Early China Special Monograph Series, no. 5 (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2000); and Sarah Allan, “The Great One, Water, and the Laozi: New Light from Guodian,” T’oung Pao 89, nos. 4–5 (2003): 237–85.

  One

  1.1

  As for the Way:

  It covers Heaven and upholds Earth.

  It extends the four directions

  and divides the eight end points.

  So high, it cannot be reached.

  So deep, it cannot be fathomed.

  It embraces and enfolds Heaven and Earth

  It endows and bestows the Formless.

  Flowing along like a wellspring, bubbling up like a font,

  it is empty but gradually becomes full.

  Roiling and boiling,

  it is murky but gradually becomes clear.

  Therefore,

  pile it up vertically: it fills all within Heaven and Earth.

  Stretch it out horizontally: it encompasses all within the Four Seas.

  Unwind it limitlessly: it is without distinction between dawn and dusk.

  Roll it out: it expands to the six coordinates.1

  Roll it up: it does not make a handful.

  It is constrained but able to extend.

  It is dark but able to brighten.

  It is supple but able to strengthen.

  It is pliant but able to become firm.

  It stretches out the four binding cords2 and restrains yin and yang.

  It suspends the cosmic rafters and displays the Three Luminaries.

  Intensely saturating and soaking,

  Intensely subtle and minute.

  Mountains are high because of it.

  Abysses are deep because of it.

  Beasts can run because of it.

  Birds can fly because of it.

  The sun and moon are bright because of it.

  The stars and timekeepers move because of it.

  Qilins wander freely because of it. Phoenixes soar because of it. [1/1/3–8]

  1.2

  The two August Lords of high antiquity3

  grasped the handles of the Way

  and so were established in the center.

  Their spirits mysteriously roamed together with all transformations

  and thereby pacified the four directions.

  Hence, they could revolve like the heavens and stand still like the earth,

  cycle round and round without stopping,

  flowing unceasingly like wat
er,

  they ended and began together with all things.

  As winds arose and clouds formed,

  there was no event to which they did not respond.

  As thunder rumbled and rain descended,

  to all they responded without end.

  Ghosts departed and spirits entered.

  Dragons arose and phoenixes alighted.

  Like the potter’s wheel turning, like the wheel hub spinning,

  they circled round and round.

  Both carved and polished,

  they returned to the Unhewn.4

  They acted non-actively and were united with the Way.5

  They spoke non-actively and were suffused by its Potency.6

  They were peaceful and without cares and attained harmony.

  Although there were a myriad of different things in the world, they accorded with their various natures. Their spirits could concentrate [on something as small as] the tip of an autumn hair7 and something as vast as the totality of space and time.8

  Their Potency:

  accorded with Heaven and the Earth and harmonized yin and yang;

  delimited the four seasons and attuned the Five Phases.9

  [Because] it affectionately supported and nurtured them,

  the myriad things nourished their vitality.

  It could seep into grasses and trees

  and soak into metal and rock.10

  Among the multitude of kinds of wild beasts

  the hairs of their coats were sleek and moist.

  Their feathers and wings fluttered;

  their horns and antlers grew.

  The embryos of beasts were not stillborn.

  The eggs of birds were not infertile.