INTRODUCTION CHENG XUANYING’S LIFE, TIMES, AND PHILOSOPHY
The commentary to the Daode jing translated here was written by Cheng Xuanying 成玄英 in the capital of the Tang dynasty in the early seventh century, possibly around 637 CE.
Cheng was an ordained Daoist monk and one of the foremost representatives of Daoist chongxuan 重玄 (Twofold Mystery) philosophy. A brilliant systematic thinker, he was invited by the emperor to the capital Chang’an in 631. His Expository Commentary to the Daode jing can be counted among the fullest expressions of Tang Daoist philosophy.
Cheng’s commentary is contained in the Daode zhenjing zhushu (DZ 710), a collection of commentaries to the Daode jing ascribed to Gu Huan (420–483) but ostensibly compiled later, because it also contains a commentary from the early twelfth century. It is also contained in a compilation from the ninth century, Qiang Siqi’s Daode zhenjing xuande zuanshu (DZ 711). In addition, the Dunhuang manuscript P 2517 contains chapters 60–80, manuscript S 5887 contains a small fragment of a preface for the text, and manuscript P 2353 contains an almost complete copy of the introductory essay (Kaiti) from 637 (Qiang 2002, 322).1
1. Cheng Xuanying: Biographical Data
Cheng Xuanying 成玄英2 was born during the late Sui or early Tang dynasty, ca. 601–604, and lived to 690 (Qiang Yu 2002, 323). His style name
1 From these documents, four modern critical editions of the text were compiled by Meng Wentong (1946, reprint 2001), Yan Lingfeng (1983), Xiong Tieji and Chen Hongxing (2011), and the editors of the Zhonghua Daozang (2003).
2 Cheng Xuanying might have been his religious name. We know that Daoists in the Tang dynasty received a religious name at their ordination (Kohn 2003, 390), but not much is known about the
The Daode jing Commentary of Cheng Xuanying. Friederike Assandri, Oxford University Press. © Oxford University Press 2021. DOI: 10.1093/oso/9780190876456.003.0001
(zi 字) was Zishi 子實. Originally, he came from Shanzhou 陝州 in Henan, and as a young man, he lived as a recluse in Donghai 東海 in the coastal region of today’s Lianyungang in northern Jiangsu (Yu 1998, 70). This period of his life might have been devoted to intense study. He must have made quite a reputation for himself as a Daoist scholar; eventually, that reputation reached all the way to the capital. In 631, Emperor Taizong invited him to come to live in Chang’an (Xin Tang shu, 59.163). He remained there for about twenty years. For some time, he lived in the Temple of the Western Splendor (Xihua guan), which Emperor Taizong had established near the Western Market after a Daoist had healed the crown prince Li Chengqian (d. 644) by a magic prayer.
Records of Cheng’s activities in the capital are few, and they all come from Buddhist or secular sources, not from Daoist texts. For the year 647 (Zhenguan 21), the Buddhist author Daoxuan mentions that Cheng was invited to participate in the prestigious imperially sponsored project of translating the Daode jing into Sanskrit (Ji gujin Fo Dao lunheng, T 2104, 3, 386c). The project failed because the Daoist collaborators, including Cheng, could not reach agreement about the correct terminologies with the main translator, the famous Buddhist Xuanzang (600–664). In the tenth month of the following year, 648 (Zhenguan 22), Cheng was consulted in the case of the censorship of the Scripture of the Three Sovereigns (Sanhuang jing), which had been found to contain a sentence that could be interpreted as subversive (Fayuan zhulin, T 2122, 55, 708a15; cf. Chen Guofu 1963, 77). Cheng and a colleague tried to save the scripture but to no avail; the scripture was censored and all copies collected and burned.
We find the next news about Cheng in the New History of the Tang (Xin Tangshu 59), which relates that Cheng was exiled to Yuzhou 郁州 between 650 and 656. Yuzhou refers to the same Lianyungang in northern Jiangsu where he had lived before coming to the capital; thus, it seems he was simply sent back home. Qiang Yu (2002, 323) speculates that this exile was related to his commentary to the Book of Changes (Yijing), which might have contradicted the interpretation proposed in the official interpretation of the classics, the Wujing zhengyi, which was compiled around this time as well.
Cheng must have been called back to the capital after some time, because a note in the New Records of the Two Capitals (Liangjing xinji) from 722
practice. We know for later Daoism that the religious name was created by replacing the middle character of a name “according to one’s generational position in the order’s genealogical nomenclature” (Yang 2012, 56). The last name was kept, as was the second character of the original first name. However, we do not have confirmation of the exact practice during the Tang dynasty.
mentions that Cheng lived in the Temple of the Western Splendor (Xihua guan) again in the Chuigong period (685–689)3 (cited in Qiang Yu 2002, 322).
Cheng’s writings include the Expository Commentary to the Daode jing with a Preface and an Introduction (Daode jing Xujue yishu kaiti 道德經序訣義疏 開題), his Sub-commentary to Guo Xiang’s Zhuangzi Commentary (Nanhua zhenjing zhushu 南華真經註疏), a lost commentary to the Yijing in five scrolls (Yi liuyan qiongji tu 易流演窮寂圖),4 a commentary to the Daoist Scripture of Salvation (in Yuanshi wuliang duren miaojing sizhu 元始無量度人經四註, DZ 87), and possibly also a long-lost commentary to the Daoist scripture Stanzas of Life Spirits of the Nine Heavens (Dongxuan lingbao jiutian shengshen zhang jing 洞玄靈寶九天生神章經, DZ 318).5 Both the Scripture of Salvation and the Stanzas of Life Spirits or the Nine Heavens are Daoist Lingbao scriptures. His works might be considered influential over time; his sub-commentary to Guo Xiang’s Zhuangzi commentary has been read together with Guo Xiang’s commentary as the main Zhuangzi commentary for centuries. His Expository Commentary to the Daode jing, even though modern scholarship was not aware of it for a long time, had been transmitted in the Daoist canon in two important collections, and his commentary to the Scripture of Salvation also found its way into one of the most important annotated editions of the scripture. The fact that his commentary to the Book of Changes is lost might be due more to its significance than to its insignificance as well—if Qiang Yu (2002, 323) is right in thinking it was suppressed and led to Cheng being exiled for some time.
2. Context: The Challenges of Being a Daoist in Early Tang Chang’an
Cheng Xuanying, like many Daoists living in the early Tang capital, does not quite conform to the commonplace image of a Daoist. He did not live on some secluded mountain, eating pine nuts and practicing longevity exercises or silent meditation; he lived in the capital, in the center of power, politics, and intrigue. He was an ordained Daoist master but also a highly educated intellectual and an astute philosopher. Invited to the capital by the emperor, he lived in a large state-financed temple and presumably socialized with high society, such as officials, Buddhists, and scholars.
3 He is called Cheng Yuanying 成元英 in this text, presumably because the character xuan 玄 of his original name became taboo after the emperor Xuanzong (r. 712–756) took it as part of his name.
4 This commentary is not mentioned in Tang histories but only in later bibliographies, such as the Wenxian tongkao from 1317 CE (175, 24a).
5 This commentary is mentioned in the Yuan dynasty commentary Dongxuan lingbao jiutian sheng shen zhang jing zhu, DZ 398, 0, 1a. For the scripture, see Schipper and Verellen 2004, 220.
His philosophy is thus not the upshot of secluded meditation on solitary mountains but the product of an intense intellectual exchange between highly cultured Buddhists, Daoists, and laymen.
As a Daoist, Cheng was interested in the many questions Daoism had engaged in for centuries—from pragmatic issues of how to gain long life and how to create peace in the world, to abstract philosophical inquiries into the ontological substrate of all being, to the question of how the world came to be, how human beings can be explained in all their physiological and psychological complexity, and how they could be saved from harm, including death. Yet the answers to all these questions had to fit into his concrete time and place as well and thus had to address some specific issues.
Since the end of the unified empire of the Han in 220 CE, Daoism and Buddhism had become important players in society and in the environment of the courts. Offering concepts and practices for personal salvation and selfcultivation, which were attractive to rulers as much as to their subjects, both religions had gained esteem and followers among the elite and the common people. Furthermore, both religions offered the courts access to divine support and ideological and pragmatic advice on how to govern based on their respective teachings. Last but not least, they proposed new legitimation strategies when the traditional legitimating concept of the emperor as the Son of Heaven6 had lost much persuasiveness in the divided empire.
On the other hand, the popularity of the two religions also created the need and wish of the court to control them. Different systems for control of the religious clergy, from direct administrative control, to influence through financial patronage, to purges of the clergy, were put in place during the Six Dynasties period.
Throughout the Period of Division, Buddhism and Daoism were competing in the environments of the various courts for influence, recognition, and imperial patronage.
In 570, Zhou Wudi, preparing to unite the empire, was the first to establish an official ranking of the teachings. After organizing a series of public debates between proponents of the three teachings in the years 568–570
6 The title “Son of Heaven” was used since the Western Zhou dynasty as a designation for the ruler, expressing that he was conceived as “mediator between heaven, earth and man” (Ching 1997, 37) and claimed legitimacy based on a “Mandate of Heaven.” The title was re-established under the Han (Puett 2017, 101) and continued to be used for the medieval period and beyond. For a detailed study of the concept, see Ching 1997. Since the title was also associated with the claim of ruling “all under Heaven,” the concept was less convincing in the situation of the divided empire, with many emperors ruling smaller territories.
(Kohn 1995, 31), he established an official ranking with Confucianism first, Daoism second, and Buddhism last (see Zhou shu 5, 2590b). When this ranking met with resistance especially from the Buddhists, he initiated a persecution of Buddhism in 574. However, his plans for a unification of China as well as his persecution of Buddhism ended abruptly, when he suddenly fell ill during one of his military campaigns and died shortly after in 578. Three years later, in 581, the Northern Zhou dynasty was overthrown by the Sui dynasty. Yang Jian, first emperor of the Sui dynasty, completed the unification of China in 589.
Buddhism played an important role in Yang Jian’s attempts to create a unifying ideology for his newly united empire. In public acts, he presented himself as a supreme ruler and benefactor of the Buddhist sangha.7 He established Buddhist monasteries at the five holy mountains of China as well as in forty-five prefectures throughout the country. The apex of his Buddhist activities was when, between 601 and 604, he had 110 stupas8 built, and in 604 enshrined relics in all of them. His son and successor, Yang Guang (r. 605–618) seems to have continued the legitimation and political ideology of his father, which relied much on Buddhism. Overall, during the Sui dynasty, Daoism was of minor importance in comparison to Buddhism, even though in the official discourse of the Sui ideology, the age-old tradition of the emperor honoring Laozi seems to have been revived to some extent (Xiong 2006, 143ff.): a stele was erected in Laozi’s presumed birthplace, and a hall of worship was established there (Wright 1979, 77–78; Kohn 1998, 42). Yet Daoism lost ground to Buddhism in the capital during the Sui dynasty. The Sui dynasty was to be short-lived. Increasing rebellions after 613 and an unsuccessful Chinese military campaign against Koguryô in Korea weakened the standing of the emperor. By 617, the Sui empire was in utter chaos. Different rebel leaders were fighting for power over the newly unified empire. One of the rebel leaders was Li Yuan 李淵, who would become the first emperor of the Tang dynasty. In 618, he conquered the capital Chang’an and established himself as first emperor of the Tang dynasty (Tang Gaozu 高祖, r. 618–627). However, it would take him years to vanquish all other rebels; peace and order were restored in 624.
In the time of chaos and fighting after the fall of the Sui, Daoists and Buddhists prophesied the ascent to power of Li Yuan and reported sightings
7 The sangha is the Buddhist monastic community.
8 A stupa is a pagoda-like structure built to store relics of the Buddha.
of favorable portents and omens (see Benn 1977, 26–27). Among the many portents reported at the time, a theophany at Mount Yangjiao 羊角山9 had the greatest impact. It was reported that a divinity appeared several times to a commoner, named Ji Shanxing 吉善行 (Mr. Good-omen Good-conduct). The visions began in early 620 rather obscurely, leading by the eighth month of that year to a clear statement of the divinity: the divinity claimed to be Li Laozi 李老子, and he claimed to be the ancestor of the Li Tang 李唐 10 Most probably, Daoists in the entourage of Li Yuan had manipulated the series of visions and their reports (see Benn 1977, 29). Be that as it may, the idea of being descended from Li Laozi, a god, and thus getting divine protection from a god-ancestor must have been very appealing—and indeed, the idea became central to the building of Tang ideology.11
The Tang rulers, beginning with Gaozu and Taizong 太宗 (r. 627–650), used the myth of Laozi being the ancestor of the Tang ruling family to build a powerful ideology to consolidate their power. Laozi became the god-ancestor of the Tang. This myth was confirmed in edicts and public acts. In 626, Tang Gaozu established the official ranking of the three teachings as Daoism first, Confucianism second, and Buddhism last—ironically at the celebration of the sacrifices for the former teachers and wise men at the imperial university, a thoroughly Confucian institution (Ji gujin Fo Dao lunheng, T 2104, 3, 381a22–23). While there are no clear indications of the reaction of the Confucians to this new hierarchical order of the three teachings, Buddhist protests are well documented. In fact, the early Tang dynasty, all the way to the time when Cheng was living in Chang’an, saw very lively polemical exchanges between representatives of Buddhism and Daoism (Assandri 2015).
In 637, the same year Cheng is said to have presented his Expository Commentary, Emperor Taizong, who had called Cheng to the capital, reconfirmed in an edict the ranking of Daoism as first among the three teachings, based on the idea that Laozi was the imperial ancestor (Quan Tang wen, vol. 1, j. 6, 26a–b). Again, the Buddhist clergy reacted with resistance and
9 This incident, which is recorded in an official source (Tang huiyao, 50) for the third year of the reign of Li Yuan, has been placed conveniently in the first month of the first year of his reign by Daoist historiographical sources (e.g., Youlong zhuan, DZ 774, 5, 10b; Lidai chong Dao ji, DZ 593, 1, 3b; Hunyuan sheng ji, DZ 770, 8, 3a). For some speculations on the men behind the incident, see Benn 1977, 29.
10 Li Tang is a designation for the ancestral lineage of the Tang rulers.
11 This ideology was prepared carefully in public acts, culminating more than a century later in the reign of Xuanzong. A detailed study of this ideology is to be found in Benn 1977.
polemics against Daoism. However, Emperor Taizong stayed with his initial decision (Ji gujin Fo Dao lunheng, T 2104, 3, 382; and Guang hongming ji, T 2103, 25, 283c).
Ranking as the first of the three teachings entailed many benefits for the Daoists, including state-sponsored temples and rituals. Yet their move into the center of power also brought new challenges.
One was the necessity to compete in open debate. Different from a secluded life in faraway mountains, here the Daoists were in the limelight of a vibrant intellectual life. Debate was one of its most vivid expressions. Debates could be greater or smaller events, from a setting in a temple, with one Daoist or Buddhist being questioned by a patron on doctrinal points, to private outings of friends, who would debate in Pure Talk (qingtan 清談)12 manner, to debates at court with an audience of hundreds, even thousands. Those large organized religious debates served not only for edification but also to determine ranking and patronage at court.13 Daoism was in difficulty here, because many of its most valued scriptures, such as the Shangqing 上 清 (Highest Clarity) and Lingbao 靈寶 (Numinous Treasure) texts, were esoteric and could not be divulged to the uninitiated—much less to a huge audience (Assandri 2005, 434).
Another challenge was internal diversity. Daoists at court represented “the” Daoist view, yet they must have been keenly aware that there were many different, at times competing, groups, sects, traditions, or communities of practice that claimed to be Daoist. Some would be organized around the possession or study of particular, often esoteric scriptures, such as the traditions of the southern Jiangnan region, where the Shangqing and Lingbao scriptures had appeared in 364–370 and 400 CE, respectively. These scriptures had introduced an expanded cosmology with layers of heavens ever higher and ever closer to Dao, where exalted deities, such as the highest deity of the Lingbao scriptures—Yuanshi Tianzun—dwelt. Yuanshi Tianzun was conceived of as much more exalted than Lord Lao, the deified Laozi. Other Daoist groups were centered in particular temples, such as the Louguan 樓 觀 temple which claimed to be the place where Laozi had composed the Daode jing. Others again were the descendants or offshoots of the first social
12 Pure Talk was a form of debate consisting of short, witty exchanges. It developed during the time of division after the third century CE and soon became a popular pastime of the elite. See Zürcher 1959, 93ff for a detailed discussion.
13 About the culture of debate and its influence in Six Dynasties and early Tang, see Assandri 2009b and Assandri 2015, 13–22.
organization of Daoism, the Celestial Masters (tianshidao 天師道), which maintained parishes and registered families of adepts. Different groups revered different texts and different deities and proposed different practices. The long period of political separation of northern and southern China had exacerbated this phenomenon.
While Daoist scriptures from the Six Dynasties period betray the competition between different Daoist groups (see Assandri 2008; Strickmann 1977; Bokenkamp 1983), there were also important incentives for unification of these disparate traditions, among them also the competition with Buddhism. Imperial administrations contributed to the drive for integration by treating Daoism, just like Buddhism, as one religion, for administrative purposes.
One rationale for the trend to unify was certainly the claim of all groups and scriptures to originate in and lead back to Dao as ultimate source, substance, and rule of all that is. Yet the process of organizing competing sacred scriptures, gods, rituals, and practices was challenging.14
So, for a prominent Daoist in the capital, the tasks at hand were many. He had to prove that Laozi, ancestor of the Tang rulers, was a deity and sage who could stand up to any comparison with Buddha or the Confucian sage kings. Furthermore, Laozi had to be integrated with other Daoist gods, in particular with the highest deity of the Lingbao scriptures, Yuanshi Tianzun, who until the last quarter of the sixth century had eclipsed Laozi in many ways.15 Then it had to be proven that Daoist teachings were as good as or better than those of the Buddhists in providing universal salvation and practical guidance for governing and legitimization.
In addition, there were the core concerns of Daoism, such as the search for a way to grasp or obtain Dao, which then would afford the person who obtained it power and immortality.
14 Around the same time, in Buddhism, major efforts also were undertaken to produce a systematic ordering of the different teachings that were by then present in China. In Buddhism, these efforts of doctrinal classification are generally referred to with the technical term panjiao 判教 (see Mun 2002 for a survey).
15 See Assandri 2009a, 9–15.
3. Cheng Xuanying’s Expository Commentary and the “Chinese Conquest of Buddhism”
Cheng Xuanying develops in his Expository Commentary to the Daode jing a vision of Daoist teachings that answers these challenges. It covers the exploration of the mysterious relation of Dao to the phenomena, the characteristics of the sage as model for a ruler and model for a Daoist adept, ethical rules that would allow an adept to reach Dao and a ruler to hold power, detailed instructions for the Daoist adept on how to live and practice, and the portrayal of Laozi as a deity and sage who would be superior to Buddha and to the sage kings of the Confucian tradition, because he united the most appealing qualities of both. Furthermore, Cheng proposes a systematic analysis of the Daode jing, which emphasizes (or, better, constructs) the internal coherence of this rather vague and enigmatic text, and thus he transforms the Daode jing from a loose collection of aphorisms and utterances to a wellorganized philosophical exposition.
Thus, Laozi, presumed the divine author of the Daode jing, is confirmed as compatible with or superior to Buddha and the Confucian sages, and his work, the Daode jing, is presented as a philosophically sophisticated text that is in no way inferior to any of the more recently imported or revealed texts, Buddhist or Daoist, that had dominated the intellectual and religious field in early medieval China.
Interpreting the Daode jing, a text that had a long and illustrious history as a subject of debate, Cheng manages to position the Daoist teaching as a continuation of earlier exegesis, like that of the Xuanxue, 16 which had never lost its appeal among the cultured elite,17 and at the same time as a salvational teaching that could match the teachings of their Buddhist competitors.
The conceptual tools Cheng employed to achieve this endeavor came from different backgrounds, many of them from Buddhism. How should we think
16 Xuanxue, the “exploration of the Dark,” was a philosophical trend of the early medieval period. It centered on interpretations of the Book of Changes, the Daode jing, and the Zhuangzi. Its roots are in the Wei (220–265) and Western Jin (265–316) periods; in the fifth century CE, it became the name of a branch of learning at the imperial university in the south. Among its most prominent early representatives are Wang Bi (226–249) and Guo Xiang (252?–312).
17 In the early Tang dynasty, the scholar officials Lu Deming (556–627) and Fu Yi (554–639) promoted the Wang Bi text and commentary to the Daode jing (Wagner 2003a, 3). Furthermore, Wang Bi’s commentary to the Book of Changes was chosen as the basis for the new Correct Commentary (Zhouyi Zhengyi) in the monumental project of the revision and edition of new commentaries to the classics, the Wujing Zhengyi. This project started officially in 638, during the time when Cheng also was active in the capital.
of this? In the past, the general consensus was that Buddhism “conquered” China, and Daoism was “influenced” by Buddhism. However, understanding the interaction of Buddhism and Daoism in terms of conquest or influence, where one active agent shapes a passive agent, or in terms of borrowing (or even plagiarizing), where conceptions of another school of thought are simply appropriated, falls short of the complex and creative processes that took place.18 Conceptualizing these processes in terms of “influence” implies conceiving of religions as firmly bounded entities, which “own” certain dogmas, concepts, and practices, which can then be stolen, borrowed, influenced, or transformed. This conception of religion seems to be difficult to maintain in the rather fluid environment of early medieval religions in China. Therefore, I propose to consider Cheng as an author who lived in an intellectually vibrant environment, where much discussion and debate among the three teachings resulted in an enrichment of the conceptual tools at his disposal and in a philosophical discourse that encompassed all three teachings.
In early medieval China, the boundaries among the three teachings were demarcated, as the voluminous Buddhist apologetic literature especially documents. However, texts such as the “Three Mysteries” (Daode jing, Book of Changes, and Zhuangzi) or the “Five Classics” (Book of Songs, Book of History, Book of Changes, Book of Rites, and Spring and Autumn Annals) were studied and discussed among all the educated elite, including secular scholars and Buddhist and Daoist clergy. Just as the early Xuanxue philosophers would study the Daode jing but essentially considered Laozi a mere philosopher, while they held Confucius to be the last of the real sages (Wagner 2000, 120), Buddhist monks such as Kumārajīva, for example, would also write commentaries explaining the Daode jing while revering Buddha. On the level of philosophical debate, classic texts such as the Daode jing or the Confucian classics were free to be used and studied by everybody, independent of religious or philosophical affiliations.
The Daode jing had a double role, though: where scholarly commentators such as Wang Bi (226–249) considered the Daode jing as an apt “exploration of the Dark” (Wagner 2003b) by a philosopher called Laozi, Daoists claimed that the Daode jing was revealed by a deity Lord Lao in order to instruct the people. Daoists eventually produced commentaries that were intended to be read only by believers, and they added esoteric “oral instructions” (koujue) to the Daode jing. However, they never contested that the text of the Daode jing
18 For this issue, compare Campany 2003.
itself was part of the public intellectual realm. Thus, the Daode jing also became a focal point for interaction of the ideas of adherents to the three teachings. And as such, it became a vector for engagement with different ideas, including novel concepts and theories that were proposed by Buddhist masters and Buddhist texts.
To construct meaning in his Expository Commentary, Cheng used concepts, methods, and terminologies that had come to China with Buddhism. However, I argue that the Expository Commentary should not be judged as a more or less genuine copy of Buddhism or a more or less diluted or impure Daoism. Cheng simply used all the conceptual tools and devices he had at his disposal to complete his hermeneutic endeavor to understand the notoriously difficult text of the Daode jing and to extract from this text answers for the questions and issues of his times It is in this context that I propose to speak of a “Chinese conquest of Buddhism.” Cheng had “conquered,” or mastered, many of the complex Buddhist concepts to a degree that he could not just “coopt” (or plagiarize) them, as had been done in many of the Daoist scriptures of the Six Dynasties period. He was able to use them as conceptual tools in his interpretation of the Daode jing. This allowed him to achieve a reading of the Daode jing that is remarkable both for its coherence and for its powerful approach to addressing the various challenges faced by Daoists at the Tang court that I enumerated at the end of section 2 above. Furthermore, he managed to present several originally Buddhist concepts, which presumably were attractive for the Chinese thinkers, as an integral part of Laozi’s teachings.
A. Creating Structure: Daode jing Exegesis and Buddhist Textual Organization
(kepan)
Cheng Xuanying employs several structuring devices in his commentary, which add internal coherence to the Daode jing and furthermore establish it in a dense web of intertextual relations, in particular with the Zhuangzi and the classics. The Daode jing was transmitted in two scrolls (juan 卷). The first scroll, covering chapters 1–37, was called Daojing 道經, “The Classic of Dao,” and the second scroll, covering chapters 38–81, was called Dejing 德經, “The Classic of Virtue (De).” While the Mawangdui manuscripts19 suggest that the
19 The Mawangdui manuscripts are silk scrolls with the text of the Daode jing dated from the second century BCE, which were excavated in 1973 in a tomb in Mawangdui near Changsha. In these manuscripts, the order of the two scrolls of the Daode jing is reversed; see Kohn 2019, 36.
order of the two scrolls might have been reversed at some point, this order of the scrolls is found in the Heshang Gong commentary20 as well as in that of Wang Bi.
Within the scrolls, there are eighty-one short chapters (zhang 章).21 The Heshang Gong commentary22 provides each of the eighty-one chapters with a thematic title. These titles, however, do not connect the individual chapters in a meaningful way; they simply provide a headline for each chapter. The sequence of the eighty-one chapters in the Heshang Gong commentary is the same in Wang Bi’s and Cheng’s commentaries, but neither uses the headlines of the Heshang Gong commentary. Cheng simply designates each chapter by the first few words that appear in it.
However, he attempts—and quite successfully at that—to make out of the loose collection of eighty-one short chapters a coherent text. In order to achieve this, he uses structural devices.
First, he divides the two scrolls into three units each, with one chapter as an introduction (chapters 1 and 38, respectively), the bulk of the chapters in between as the middle part, and the last chapters (chapters 37 and 81, respectively) as a conclusion.
Furthermore, he introduces each chapter with a structural comment, which explains the reason for the particular position in the sequence of chapters, relating the content to the preceding chapter. In the translation, I mark this structural comment as n.0, where n is the chapter number (so, e.g., 1.0 is the structural comment for chapter 1, 2.0 is the structural comment for chapter 2, etc.) and set it in italics.
Next, he creates subdivisions of each chapter, presenting in his structural comment n.0 a separate short summary for each subdivision. The short summaries are then repeated at the beginning of each subdivision of the interlinear commentary. In the translation, these summaries are set in italics and numbered n.1, n.2, and so on. The single lines of the Daode jing are set in
20 The dates of the Heshang Gong commentary are not established; see Tadd 2013, 9f., for a discussion. Most probably, the text originates in the Eastern Han period (26–220 CE), cf. Kohn 2019, 39.
21 For a discussion of how and when the eighty-one chapters were established, see Ding 2017.
22 The Heshang Gong commentary is a zhangju 章句 (“chapters and sentences”) commentary. The zhangju commentary style developed during the first century BCE. It involved parsing the original text into separate units or lines and adding a summarizing comment to each of the parsed lines. Zhangju is also translated as “sections and sentence commentary” (see, e.g., Schimmelpfennig 2000). I translate zhang 章 as “chapters” because Cheng uses additional units of division, which I designate as sections.
small caps in the translation and are designated with capital letters, resulting in a numbering n.1.A, n.1.B, and so on.
This technique of creating divisions and subdivisions was introduced in Buddhist texts, where it is commonly called kepan 科判 23 It seems that the Buddhist monk Dao’an 道安 (321–385) was the first to propose a basic division of scriptures into three parts, namely, introduction (xufen 序分), main thesis (zhengzongfen 正宗分), and conclusion (liutongfen 流通分, literally “dissemination”) (Tang 1991, 550). Zhang Bowei (2007, 83–84) postulates that the development of the practice of creating structural divisions in Buddhist texts was related to the trend of explaining the “meaning” instead of the “words,” which had become popular with the Xuanxue scholars of the third century CE. Jin Tao (2008, 61) points out that the practice seems to have been used particularly frequently by the Buddhist authors Huiyuan 慧 遠 (523–592), Zhiyi 智顗 (538–597), and Jizang 吉藏 (549–623). All three were active in the environment of Chang’an. Zhang (2007, 90–91) shows convincingly that instances of the practice can also be found in Confucian commentaries from the Six Dynasties period and in the influential early Tang compilation of the Confucian classics, Correct Meaning of the Five Classics (Wujing zhengyi).
It is possible that the use of kepan, which was intended as a device to facilitate understanding and explanations (Zhang 2007, 85), rose to prominence together with the development of the style of the expository commentary (yishu) (Tang 1991, 549f.). Mou Runsun (1984) has argued that the yishu-style commentary has its origin in oral debates and lectures, where a master explained a scripture to an audience. The yishu commentarial form was used by Buddhists and Confucians alike (Mou 1984; Makeham 2003, 86–88; Plassen 2004; Zhang 2007), and Cheng’s Daode jing commentary is also an example of yishu commentary. Cheng applies the technique of kepan on the level of the two scrolls, which he divides into three sections, and on the level of the single chapters, which he divides into varying subsections.
Another important structuring device is citations. On the one hand, he uses frequent quotations of the Daode jing itself, thus creating crossreferences between the different chapters. In addition to the explanations of the sequence of the chapters, this technique of citation creates a dense
23 The terminology for the procedure varies in Buddhist texts; see Jin 2008, 7 and Zhang 2007, 82 for a list of the various terms.
intertextuality, a web of connections among the different chapters, which has the effect of emphasizing—or constructing—the internal coherence of the Daode jing.
On the other hand, he frequently closes his commentary to lines or subsections with a quotation from the Zhuangzi or else from the classics. These references are marked “Therefore the Zhuangzi24 says,” “Therefore the Book of History says,” and so on. With this technique, he manages to weave the Daode jing as he reads it, including all the seemingly Buddhist conceptions he integrates or uses in his interpretation, firmly into the larger web of traditional Chinese literature.
B. The Method of Chongxuan: The Daode jing and Buddhist Mādhyamika Teachings
“Mysterious and mysterious again (xuan zhi you xuan)—this is the door to all marvels.” These final lines of the first chapter of the Daode jing are the source of the term chongxuan, “Twofold Mystery.”
Cheng comments on the phrase as follows (1.4.C):
The man who has desires is attached only to being. The gentleman25 who has no desires then again is attached to non-being. Thus [Laozi] says the first “mysterious” (xuan) in order to eliminate these two clingings. But then he is afraid that the adept may be attached to this [conception of] “mysterious.” Therefore, when he now says “mysterious again” (you xuan), he eliminates also this latter disease. Thus he not only obtains that [the adept] no longer clings to attachments, but he also makes sure that non-attachment itself does not become an attachment. This is rejecting and rejecting; this is why he says “mysterious and mysterious again” (xuan zhi you xuan).
The term “mysterious” (xuan), which appears here as the negation of two forms of attachment to being and non-being, is a key term of Cheng’s philosophy, which he defines in his preface (Kaiti) as follows:
24 I treat the Zhuangzi systematically as the title of a book. However, the references could also be quoting a person, Master Zhuang (Zhuangzi) (and maybe Cheng himself thought of them as such).
25 “Gentleman” translates the Chinese term shi 士, which in the Tang dynasty designated the members of the elite class of the great families who were “considered appropriate candidates for official appointments” (Hucker 1985, 35).
“Mystery” (xuan) is a name for what is profound and far-reaching; it also implies the meaning of non-attachment. It denotes the ultimate profoundness and the ultimate distance, not hindered by attachments and not clinging. [It refers to a state of] non-attachment to being and non-attachment to nonbeing. How could it be only no attachment to attachment? It means also no attachment to non-attachment! The hundred negations26 and the tetralemma [leave the adept with] no attachments whatsoever. This is called “Twofold Mystery.” (Daode jing kaiti xujue yishu, in Yan 1983, 260; cf. Robinet 1977, 256)
The process of consecutive negation described here as “rejecting and rejecting” owes a debt to the logical form of the tetralemma, as Cheng also explicitly claims in the passage cited.
Tetralemma logic as a process of thinking about the relation of any dyadic pair of conceptions had become known in China mainly through the Buddhist Kumārajīva’s (344–413) translations of the three treatises of the teaching of the Middle Way27 in the early fifth century CE. The tetralemma denotes an ascending series of four statements, where each statement presents a negation of the preceding one, until in the last statement no further negation is possible. Taking the question if things exist as an example, the series of statements would be: 1. All things exist. 2. All things do not exist. 3. All things exist and do not exist. 4. All things neither exist nor do not exist.28
This four-step progression, which can be applied to any pair of oppositional terms, offered a logical tool that allowed going beyond the simple paradoxical relation of being to non-being or any other dyad.
In India, Nagārjuna (second century CE) not only had employed the logical tool of the tetralemma in debate to refute opponents, as did others during his time in India, but he also had established it as a pedagogical device to guide his disciples to realize ultimate truth. For this purpose, he combined the four statements with a theory of Twofold Truth, worldly and absolute, into a progression that leads the student, beginning with the common-sense assumption that all things exist, through a process of successive negation, to the realization of the ultimate emptiness of all being (Kalupahana 1976, 137).
26 Baifei 百非, “hundred negations,” is a technical name for the technique of continuing negation used in Mādhyamika.
27 Zhong lun 中論 (Fundamental Verses of the Middle Way, Mula-mādhyamaka-kārikā, T 1564), Bai lun 百論 (Treatise in One Hundred Verses, Śāta-śāstra, T 1569), and Shi’ermen 十二門論 (Twelve Gate Treatise, Dvādaśadvāra-śāstra, T 1568).
28 In formal terms, this can be noted as: 1. A (x). 2. A (⌐x). 3. A (x ⌐x). 4. A ⌐(x⌐x).
