The Body, Radical Health in the Zhuangzi and the Tradition of Yangsheng Literature

The attitude to yangsheng culture found in the Zhuangzi must have been fairly contentious at the time of writing, and makes some bold assertions as to what truly constitutes Nourishing Life. Unlike other roughly contemporaneous yangsheng literature such as the Guanzi Inward Training 管子內業 and the Mawangdui 馬王堆 medical manuscripts, the Zhuangzi, and indeed many of its commentaries, give absolutely no instruction on practical exercises that would help one achieve a long life, rather dealing in obtuse philosophy and parable. An examination of the text reveals a number of incongruities which can make it difficult to ascertain exactly what the perspective of yangsheng it espouses is. Indeed, one could argue that this subversion of our deeply held, preconceived beliefs is a fundamental theme of the entire text. As a result, there is no consensus amongst contemporary scholarship regarding his actual view of such practices (2).

The yangsheng literature subsequent to the Zhuangzi frequently quotes passages from the Zhuangzi; however, these passages are usually completely divorced from their original context and as such often lose the intended meaning of the original text. Furthermore, these texts often give primacy to the very techniques the Zhuangzi itself is at pains to delineate as auxiliary methods at best.

The YXYML is a Tang dynasty yangsheng text attributed to Tao Hongjing 陶弘景 (456-536 CE) and comprised of six chapters. It is concerned primarily with different facets of care for the body including lifestyle taboos, prayer, breathing techniques daoyin exercise and massage, and sexual practice. Zhuangzi is quoted from three times in the entire text (3):

A. The opening stanza to the SNL admonishing the blind pursuit of knowledge, earning “your life has a limit, but knowledge has none. If you use what is limited to pursue what has no limit, you will be in danger. If you understand this and still strive for knowledge, you will be in danger for certain!”(4)

B. The statement that “the Perfected Man does not dream,” presented completely detached from its context in the Great and Venerable Teacher 大宗師 chapter.

C. The opening of the Mastering Life 達生 chapter which states “He who has mastered the true nature of life does not labour over what life cannot do. He who has mastered the true nature of fate does not labour over what knowledge cannot change.”(5)

These quotes are presented in the opening to Chapter One of the work in a long list containing various detached quotes from a variety of medical, yangsheng and philosophical texts. This is a commonly seen trope in yangsheng literature, and serves to locate the text being written within a unified, established tradition of writing and praxis. However, it should be apparent that the focus of this work and that of the Zhuangzi are incredibly disparate; although the work locates itself within the tradition of yangsheng, this is not Zhuangzi’s conception of the term and would be more akin to the practices Zhuangzi calls yangxing 養形, that is to say nourishing bodily form. These are precisely the practices Zhuangzi criticises as inferior to the “Sitting and Forgetting 坐忘 (6)/Heart Fasting 心齋 ” method repeatedly in the work.

The hallmark of this technique is the lack of identification with bodily form, something distinct from focus on the achievement of optimal bodily form found in many of the yangsheng practices of the era. The aims of such practice are exemplified by the stories of Yan Hui when he describes his ability to: “smash up my limbs and body, drive out perception and intellect, cast off form, do away with understanding and make myself identical with the Great Thoroughfare.” (7) In Chapter 4 人間世 Yan Hui is advised by Confucius in an earlier stage of his development to practice “fasting of the heart-mind” (8) 心齋, an exercise that will result in this dissolution of the perceived self he discusses in the Great and Venerable Teacher 大宗師 chapter. The elimination of intellect and knowledge is also indicated as an important facet of this “Sitting and Forgetting” practice.

Another key characteristic of Zhuangzi’s yangsheng methodology is acceptance of the Will of Heaven, which includes incidents of misfortune, punishment, mutilation and death. Contrasting with not only the yangsheng followers of Pengzu (9) 彭祖, but also what seems to be a widely held perspective in Chinese society at the time as expressed in the Mengzi and Huai Nanzi (10) one’s physical form is presented as no hindrance to the highest levels of spiritual achievement; severely crippled sages are a recurring feature of the Zhuangzi. The sage Wang Tai “sees them as one and does not see their loss. He regards the loss of a foot as a lump of earth thrown away.”(11) This was a revolutionary concept as the Zhuangzi was written “in a culture that identified physical wholeness with ethical integrity.” (12) In the Zhuangzi “ both physical deformities and mutilating punishments are unreasonable criteria to evaluate the worth or character of individuals,”(13) a concept which ran counter to the precepts of not only yangsheng culture but deeply entrenched societal precepts.

The point Zhuangzi’s consistently tries to make in his trademark anti-logical, indirect style is that while focus on macrobiotic practices such as daoyin and breathing exercises are not harmful and maybe even helpful and can be practiced, they should not be the focus of anyone wishing to maximise their spiritual well-being and make the most of their years on the planet. As Møllgaard states “Zhuangzi certainly wants us to take care of our psycho-physical well-being… But our human life is not the life of Heaven, and for Zhuangzi the higher aim is to care for the life of Heaven.”(14) Indeed this is also the perspective of Guo Xiang, the first commentator on the Zhuangzi whose collation of the text we still use to this day (15).

However, this is not the primary focus of the YXYML. This text is primarily focused on the propagation of physical grounded techniques to extend one’s life. The truncated quotes from Zhuangzi’s do little more than add a perception of gravitas to the work; the intended meaning of the lines doesn’t really seem to be a consideration. Somewhat ironically, in the original context of quote (C) the text actually goes onto criticise these practices only a few lines later in the original text, stating emphatically “How pitiful the people of the world who think that simply nourishing the body is enough to preserve life!”(16)

This ZZQJJ is a short yangsheng text contained within the Ming dynasty Daoist Canon 正統道藏 (1445 C.E.) and is focused on breathing techniques Although the work takes its name from Zhuang Zhou himself, the Zhuangzi is only quoted from a single solitary time, in the very first line of the work. The quote comes from the closing line of the SNL which states “Though the grease burns out of the torch, the fire passes on, and no one knows where it ends.”(17) Within the context of the Zhuangzi, this line comes after a story detailing the death of Laozi, author of the Dao De Jing. As the followers of Laozi mourn for him as if mourning for a family member, Qin Shi surmises that this must indicate he was not indeed a Perfected Person 真人 and must have done something tocause his followers to be emotionally attached to his life. Qin Shi goes on to call this “hiding from Heaven,”(18) and states “when the Master came, it was the proper time; when he went away, it was the simple sequence (of his coming),” and judges his death as “no occasion for grief or joy.”(19) In this context, the grease could be interpreted as a metaphor for life, where as the fire a metaphor for the great Dao which supersedes duality and continues regardless of the passage of life and death.

An anxiety regarding death and emotional attachment to life are seen as a tangible obstacle to spiritual progress, a perspective at odds with the cults of immortality that existed at the time of writing (20). “For Zhuangzi, the desire for immortality is just another example of our outer form, and if prolonging human life becomes our main concern then we forget the source that generates human life.”(21) . The Perfected Person is presented as someone beyond life and death and in Lao Dan asserts that “life and death are the same story,”(22) and in that “the True Person of ancient times knew nothing of loving life and knew nothing of hating death.”(23) The sage is depicted as someone who “delights in early death…delights in old age,”(24) as he exists in a state beyond these dualities “where there is no life and no death.”(25). This is achieved by constantly maintaining an appreciation for the unity of all things; Confucius says of the sage Wang Tai “life and death are great affairs, and yet they are no change to him…as he holds fast to the source.”(26) There are multiple stories related in which mourning a death is admonished, running counter to the subtextual fear of death that may have been present in many practitioners of yangsheng and immortality pursuits, to widely practised Confucian mourning rituals and indeed to an in-born facet of human nature which supersedes any particular culture.

The ZZQJJ completely ignores the ramifications of this context, and instead adding the following interpretation of the passage “If the heart-mind can grasp the central principles of breathing cultivation, then one’s life will continue and not be cut off.” Here, the grease is interpreted as breath, and fire as life. There is, however, absolutely no indication that the Zhuangzi is discussing breathing practices here – in fact, as mentioned previously such practices are admonished in other parts of the text.(27) The ZZQJJ goes onto declare that one should manage one’s breath if one desires to be included in the register of immortals, and claims the exercises it documents will do just this. Judging from the original context of this line in the Zhuangzi, it should be patently clear that pursuit of immortality is in fundamental opposition to its original intended meaning.

Rather than functioning as a metaphor for a force that overrules the passage of life and death, it become a metaphor for the sustenance of bodily materials. As such, the ZZQJJ presents a philosophy of practice that is completely anathema to that of the original Zhuangzi while simultaneously quoting from it and taking its name for its system of practice.

Although the Zhuangzi has become a stalwart feature of the yangsheng tradition since its time of writing, much of this writing completely ignores the original context and meaning of the work. Zhuangzi himself does not record or promote any system of physical practice and is incredibly critical of such pursuits, yet those writing subsequently continually draw him into and associate him with the physical practices they are propagating. The ZZQJJ and YXYML both quote from Zhuangzi in order to present an image of an unbroken, unified lineage of thought and praxis and consequently enhance the authority of their own work. However, as the underlying intended meaning of the Zhuangzi often runs counter to the ideas and practices these books are trying to further, these meanings are essentially ignored. The quoting of the Zhuangzi in these two works are exemplary of a general trend in yangsheng literature, in which works quoted are completely divorced from their original context, obfuscating their intended meaning from the reader in order to validate newer compositions.

(1) p.19, Watson, B., (2013).

(2) The present text of the Zhuangzi was divided up into three sections by Guo Xiang onwards, the Inner Chapters, The Outer Chapters and the Miscellaneous Chapters, and it is widely accepted that there are multiple different authors involved in its writing. Most scholarship is in agreement that the Inner Chapters are written by a single author, and exemplify a unitary line of thought, which is continued by some but not all of the writings in the Outer and Miscellaneous Chapters. A.C. Graham and Liu Xiaogan outline a “School of Zhuang Zi” which continues the same philosophies espoused in six of the Inner Chapters, namely 17-22, despite being of different authorship. As Slingerland (2003, p.285) states: “It is also quite clear that much of the Outer and most of the Miscellaneous Chapters represent works from schools of thought (variously referred to as “Yangist, “Huang-Lao,” “Primitivist,” or “Syncretist”) only loosely related to the thought of the author of the Inner Chapters.” However there is no absolute consensus amongst scholarship. For the purposes of this article however, chapters outside of these will also be taken into consideration due to the fact the ZZQJJ and the YXYML did not make such distinctions.

(3) Various commentary by Guo Xiang 郭象, Xiang Xiu 向秀, and Ji Kang 嵇康 is also included.

(4) p.19, Watson, B., (2013).

(5) p.145, Ibid.

(6) This term is first mentioned in the Zhuangzi itself. For a detailed account of the development of the tradition, please see Kohn (2010) Sitting in Oblivion.

(7) p.53, Watson, B., (2013).

(8) p.25, Ibid.

(9) A Chinese methuselah type figure revered for his longevity. Those attempting to achieve longevity by imitating Pengzu are mocked as pitiful in the Zhuangzi at the beginning of Free and Easy Wandering 逍遙遊 chapter.

(10) p.4, Chapman, J., (2017).

(11) p.384, Farrugia, M.L., (2015).

(12) p.25, Chapman, J., (2017).

(13) p.16-17, Chapman, J., (2017).

(14) p.48, Møllgaard, E., (2007).

(15) Cole (2019) makes the assertion that Guo’s syncretic approach to the commentary is inconsistent with the original text when it comes to cultivation practices. It is not within the scope of this essay to address this perspective in totality here. However, it is worth noting that he frequently quotes from Møllgaard (2007) to support his argument who actually also shares an opinion on this topic not dissimilar to Guo in many respects.

(16) p.145, Watson, B., (2013).

(17) p.21, Watson, B., (2013).

(18) Ibid.

(19) Ibid.

(20) Harper (1998) makes a point of separating immortality and yangsheng practices, stating that the yangsheng practices had a significantly older history. However, as Stanley-Baker (2006) states by the time the Huainanzi was written, they were no longer considered separate strains of thought at least by the group involved in the writing of that text. Furthermore, the practices used by those seeking immortality were the same as those found in the yangsheng manuals.

(21) p.47, Møllgaard, E., (2007).

(22) p.37, Watson, B., (2013).

(23) p.42, Ibid.

(24) p.45, Ibid.

(25) Ibid.

(26) p.34, Ibid.

(27) Zhuangzi’s association with breathing techniques most likely comes from Chapter 6 where it is states that “The Perfected Person breathes with his heels. Common people breathe with their throats.” However, no instruction or further elaboration is given in the original text. Furthermore, there is no mention of breathing with one’s heels in the ZZQJJ.

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