修道四十九関
The 49 Barriers of Cultivating the Dao
Introduction [excerpt]
By T. H. Barrett is professor emeritus of East Asian History at the School of Oriental and African Studies, London.
[Available at https://purplecloudinstitute.com/…/the-49-barriers-of…/]
Only during the twentieth century do we see the beginnings of a shift in attitudes. The one time missionary Richard Wilhelm (1873-1930) became in effect a convert to Chinese culture, and took seriously elements in it ignored hitherto by his former colleagues. For, as recent research has established, forms of Daoist practice remained important to well educated urban Chinese in his day, as they had during Liu Yiming’s lifetime. His partial translation of a work from about the same era and milieu as that of Liu Yiming — and still important within the Chinese circles with which he was in contact — that is best known under its English title of The Secret of the Golden Flower appeared in German in 1929. Partly due to its association with the pioneering psychoanalyst C. G. Jung (1875-1961), who added an extended commentary to the main text offering his own interpretation of Wilhelm’s rendering of the Chinese, it eventually found a wide readership, especially after the 1931 English translation of was republished in an expanded edition of 1962. This version then appeared in paperback in 1984, and though reading at second remove a text that is actually a complex synthesis of teachings incorporating Buddhist as well as Daoist elements no doubt left its original meaning not easy to grasp, at least it established that the Daode jing and other early works did not encompass the totality of the Daoist heritage…
…Meanwhile in the People’s Republic of China it was not until after the Cultural Revolution of 1966 to 1976 that the study of religion became part of academic life. But once it did, it soon became clear that Liu Yiming had not been forgotten. In 1984 two Chinese researchers published a “Preliminary Exploration of the Daoist Philosophical Thought of Liu Yiming”, drawing on a wide range of his writings but especially the text that gives his interpretation of The Book of Changes. It was this element in Liu’s work, moreover, that became the first of his writings to be rendered into English, by Thomas Cleary in 1987. Cleary’s translation was greeted by academic reviewers with considerable reservations, in that the relationship of the translation to any specific edition of Liu’s work is not made at all clear in his book, nor indeed is much in the way of any subsidiary information provided beyond the translation itself. This for example might have included such expected adjuncts to academic translation as footnotes marking the presence in the text of quotations from earlier works. Thanks however to the pioneering bibliographical research of the late Monica Esposito (1962-2011), the Italian scholar who laid the foundations for the Western academic study of late imperial Daoism, it is now possible to see the precise relationship of this translation of Liu’s interpretations of The Book of Changes to its Chinese originals in this case, and also in the case of the four other publications by Liu that Cleary rendered into English over the next five years. His efforts have in any case borne fruit in that Liu’s work on the I Ching is now recognised in the principal English-language survey of the history of that classic.
For the reader of modern Chinese, editions of works like The Secret of the Golden Flower with full translation and annotation have also become available. Indeed, the academic study of such texts published in the Chinese language is today demonstrably being carried out at last to the highest and most rigorous standards.But for an Anglophone reader requiring something more than a rendering of the text of the type provided by Cleary there has in the past been nothing in the way of a helpful introduction to Liu Yiming. Here is a translation that provides just that. It speaks from within the tradition, and with authority, in the form of full commentary. But at the same time it offers a conscientious reading in English set against the original text, and further adds ample annotation aimed to assist anyone coming from outside the tradition to grasp the many subtle points of Daoist language and doctrine that – far from suggesting that Liu’s work was merely the product of a degenerate stage in an ancient tradition – reveal it to be a treasure house of finely wrought imagery based on the cumulative experience of many centuries of practice.
Much remains to be done in exploring the more recent phases of Daoism. But this handsomely presented book will, I hope, help many others on the way to greater knowledge. The translator’s long years of effort will no doubt accumulate no greater reward than this.
Post-Scriptum: Many more excerpts can be found here:
Post-Post-Scriptum: Among T H Barret’s books are, ‘Taoism Under the T’ang’; ‘Li Ao: Buddhist, Taoist or Neo-Confucian?’ and, with Peter Hobson, ‘Poems of Hanshan’.
Post-Post-Post-Scriptum: The 49 Barrier Illustrations as well as a Neijing Tu can be purchased under: https://www.jenniferkingstudio.com/works
