Chapter 96. The Way and Its Power: Laozi, Zhuangzi and the Birth of Religious Daoism

Daoism has two faces. One is the philosophy of the Daodejing and Zhuangzi, quietist and paradoxical, yet full of advice to rulers. The other is a church of hereditary Celestial Masters, healing parishes that collected rice and confessions, armies, emperor-killing elixirs and revealed scriptures. Archer sums up the relation: Taoism “as mysticism was ‘founded’ by Lao-tze (sixth century B.C.), as religion, by Chang Ling (second century A.D.), and as philosophy, by Ko Hung (third century A.D.)” [Archer, Faiths Men Live By, #55131, ch. 5 “Taoism”]. This chapter follows both faces and the politics between them. The modern practice manuals on the shelf (Chia, Reid, Van Auken) are reported as practitioners’ claims of lineage.

Laozi and the Daodejing

Archer records the traditional biography with caution. Laozi was born in 604 BCE, served as “keeper of the public records at Lo-yang”, and rode west on a “black ox” after writing the book at the border officer’s request [#55131, ch. 5]. The text has about five thousand characters in eighty-one chapters. Its standing was confirmed “in 666 A.D., when the author was canonized and made a member of the royal line”, and it was included in the national examinations [#55131, ch. 5]. The Analects edition’s chronology is more sceptical: Laozi is a “legendary figure, but text bearing name composed in latter part of 5th c. b.c.e.” [Analects, with selections from traditional commentaries, #40662, “Traditional Chronology”].

The library’s Romanian translation follows “in most cases the lexical guidance of Heshang Gong” [Lao Zi, Dao de Jing, #45052, note 16]. Its verse XXXVI shows the strategic side of the text:

“If you would diminish a thing, first enlarge it. If you would weaken a thing, first strengthen it. If you would bring about its fall, first raise it up” (“De vei voi să micşorezi un lucru, întâi şi-ntâi să îl măreşti. De vei voi ca să slăbeşti un lucru, întâi şi-ntâi să-l întăreşti. De vei voi să îi stârneşti căderea, întâi şi-ntâi să îl ridici”) [#45052, verse XXXVI].

Verse XXIX speaks to rulers directly: “If anyone wishes to rule under Heaven and acts as he pleases, I know he will not succeed. The country is an animated thing … whoever wants to subjugate it will lose it” [#45052, verse XXIX]. The political doctrine is wu-wei. The Analects introduction notes that the ideal was already present in early Zhou court religion as “effortless action”, not “doing nothing” [#40662]. Lao-tze, says Archer, “taught through negatives, and advocated inaction as the true means of the realization of life” [#55131, ch. 5].

Zhuangzi, Liezi and Mozi

For Archer, Chuang-tze (c. 350–275 BCE) “glorified his master, and gloried in attacks upon Confucianists”. Offered a prime ministership, he said he would rather be “a common turtle alive in the mud”. Where the Master spoke of wu (“nonexistence”), Chuang-tze spoke of wu-wu, “nonexisting nonexistence”. Archer judges that this “obliterates all moral distinctions” [#55131, ch. 5]. Archer then turns to Mo-ti, who “seems actually to have been reared in the Confucian ‘school'” and then “swung away—shall we say toward Taoism?” [#55131, ch. 5]. Archer calls him “the most religious of all the ancient thinkers” and notes that the Taoists “preserved his writings”.

The Simpkins see the seed of religious Daoism inside the philosophical classics: “Both refer to faraway places where divine beings lived free of all worldly limitations, capable of great powers. Lieh-tzu spoke of men who could walk through walls, implying that nothing in this world could stop them” [Simpkins & Simpkins, Taoism for Beginners, #50704, ch. 1].

The Celestial Masters: a church and a theocracy

According to the Simpkins, Chang Ling (Zhang Daoling) was born under Emperor Huan and preached long-life methods in Szechwan. Converts “were required to pay five bushels of rice when they joined, giving the sect its original name”, and he took the title “Heavenly Master”. His son received an army through a governor’s patronage. His grandson Chang Lu “had the general [Chang Hsiu] killed and became the leader of both sects”, and then set up “free inns for travelers where Taoism could be taught”. Chang Hsiu’s rival cult held that “sickness was the result of sin” and cured it by confession [#50704, ch. 1, “Founding of the Taoist Church”]. The reference shelf gives the founding as 142 AD and says the movement won independence in 194 and “controlled a theocratic state in what is now Sichuan”. Zhang Lu submitted to Cao Cao in 215 [Wikipedia: Way of the Celestial Masters; Wikipedia: Zhang Lu (Han dynasty)]. Camphausen dates Chang Tao-ling to 34–156 CE and names his school “Five Pecks of Rice Taoism” (Wu-tou-mi Tao), one of the major schools of religious Taoism (Tao-chiao) [Camphausen, Encyclopedia of Sacred Sexuality, #51423, “Chang Tao-ling”; “Five Pecks of Rice Taoism”]. Ripley’s modern remedies still appeal to “one of the earliest Daoist precepts from the early community of Zhang Daoling, the first ‘Celestial Master'” [Ripley, The Hundred Remedies of the Tao, #73569].

Archer’s earlier edition describes the hereditary papacy as it stood in the 1930s:

“Descendants lived on Lung Hu mountain and served as popes until recently, each head of the Chang family being known as T’ien-tze, or ‘Heaven Master.’ Tradition says there was passed on to each successor a sword of the founder, at once the symbol of the papal office and the instrument of miracle” [#55131, earlier edition, ch. 5, p. 113].

Visitors reported “a court-yard full of jars in each of which some hurtful demon is held prisoner”. Emperors endowed the office (estates in 1015; Kublai Khan’s invitation in 1276) until the Kuomintang “lately” drove the pope from his seat [#55131, earlier edition, ch. 5].

The Great Peace and the Yellow Turbans

The Simpkins describe a second movement. Yu Chi’s Book of Grand Peace and Purity inspired the Way of Grand Peace under Chang Chueh. As the Han court “became cruel”, “the magical mists of Taoism swept through the country”. In their account, “most of China converted to Taoism by 184 C.E.”; when the government threatened prohibition, “more than 350,000 people joined together and rose against the government as one, wearing yellow turbans on their heads”, which “seriously weakened the crushing grip of the Han dynasty” [#50704, ch. 1]. The slogan was an old royal ideal: Armstrong shows “Great Peace (tai-ping)” was the Zhou name for cosmic stability under a righteous king [Armstrong, The Great Transformation, #82303, ch. 2]. Camphausen adds that collective sexual rites (ho-ch’i) “were practiced by the schools of religious Taoism known as the Way of Supreme Peace and Five Pecks of Rice Taoism until the time of the Sung dynasty”, aiming at “sexual union with as many partners as possible” [#51423, “Ho-ch’i”].

Elixirs and immortality

Ferrara contrasts the two Daoisms. Philosophical Daoists followed Laozi’s mysticism, “in contrast to the wizards of religious Daoism who studied alchemy to live forever”. He also notes that “charlatan purveyors of religious Daoism and alchemy inadvertently, but all too frequently, poisoned themselves and others (including some emperors)” [Ferrara, Sacred Bliss, #66945, ch. 3]. He further records that the shaman-healers, who guarded their herbal knowledge in secret, saw their “medico-religious practices … repressed beginning in the Han dynasty (206 BCE–220 CE) as state authorized religions commanded imperial favor” [#66945, ch. 3]. Archer gives the most striking figures. Shih Huang-ti sent an expedition for the herb of immortality, and “in the ninth century, A.D., five emperors in succession, each eager for long life, died from elixirs prepared by Taoist priests” [#55131, earlier edition, ch. 5]. The Simpkins describe how the cinnabar elixirs of the fang shih (c. 200 BCE) gave way to inner alchemy, in which “all ingredients, equipment, and transformations took place within the body” (Dragon-Tiger Classic, c. 220 CE) [#50704, ch. 1].

Shangqing, the Tang and Complete Reality

Mantak Chia and Kris Deva North state that “in 265 CE, under the Eastern Ch’in, the Lady Wei, daughter of a Celestial Masters’ priest and herself a priestess, founded the Shang ch’ing school of Taoists to revive and sustain the shamanic practices of ecstatic flight and journeying”. They add that Tao Hung-ching, “a former librarian at Court”, collected the texts [Chia & North, Taoist Shaman, #68914, ch. 1]. The reference shelf instead connects the school to Yang Xi’s revelations, which “Tao Hongjing subsequently compiled … into the c. 499 Zhen’gao” [Wikipedia: Yang Xi (mystic)]. Readers should weigh Chia’s 265 date against that account.

Under the Tang, Daoism reached the summit of state favour. Van Auken writes that it “did become the official religion of the Tang Dynasty (618–907 CE)” [Van Auken, Edgar Cayce and the Secret of the Golden Flower, #42057, “A Brief History”]. The Simpkins count “more than fifteen hundred Taoist monasteries” [#50704]. Van Auken attributes the Secret of the Golden Flower to Lü Yen (Lü Tung-pin, 700s CE) and links it to the “Master of the Pass” who received the Daodejing [#42057]. Daniel Reid traces “Complete Reality” (chuan-jen) Taoism to Lu Tung-pin. In his account it “transcended sectarian divisions” and was carried forward under the Sung by “Chang Po-tuan and Wang Che”, whose disciple Sun Pu-er became “the most famous female adept of the Tao in Chinese history”, and under the Yuan by Chang San-feng [Reid, The Complete Book of Chinese Health and Healing, #80213, ch. 1]. These are a modern practitioner’s lineage claims.

Imperial favour alternated with repression. Archer notes that “in 955 the Emperor closed thirty thousand unauthorized Buddhist and Taoist monasteries” and that Taoism was sometimes persecuted “because of its critical attitude toward the power of a centralized government” [#55131, ch. 4–5]. The “Boxer” uprising of 1900 was in his view “Taoist both in origin and temper”, and the Boxers “concocted a magical immunity, they thought, against the weapons of the ‘foreign devils'” [#55131, ch. 5 and earlier edition n. 2]. The Communist regime opened campaigns against Taoist societies in 1950–51, and in 1953 it claimed that “more than 4,000,000 duped members had withdrawn from these reactionary sects” [#55131, ch. 5].

René Guénon offered a Western esoteric reading. His collection pairs Islamic esotericism with Taoism, and its final chapter, its preface explains, shows that “the difference between esoterism and exoterism is also found in the non-religious forms of the Tradition”, that is, in Taoism and Confucianism [Guénon, Aperçus sur l’ésotérisme islamique et le taoïsme, #68713]. Taoism thus becomes the esoteric and Confucianism the exoteric side of one tradition.

Key points

• Archer distinguishes Taoism as mysticism (Lao-tze), as religion (Chang Ling) and as philosophy (Ko Hung). The Analects chronology treats Laozi as legendary and the text as late fifth century BCE.
• The Daodejing gives strategic advice to rulers (verse XXXVI: “to diminish a thing, first enlarge it”). Its wu-wei continues an older Zhou ideal of effortless rule.
• For Archer, Chuang-tze’s “nonexisting nonexistence” obliterates moral distinctions, while Mo-ti, reared among Confucians, swung toward Taoism and was “the most religious of all the ancient thinkers”. Liezi’s wall-walkers and Zhuangzi’s divine beings point toward religious Daoism (Simpkins).
• Zhang Daoling’s Five Pecks of Rice church became a hereditary theocracy. Archer describes the Heaven Master’s sword, the jars of demons and the papal estates.
• In the Simpkins’ account, the Way of Grand Peace raised 350,000 Yellow Turbans in 184 CE, turning the royal ideal of tai-ping into revolt.
• Alchemy killed emperors: Archer says five died in succession in the ninth century. Inner alchemy replaced mineral elixirs.
• The Tang made Daoism official (Van Auken). Shangqing and Complete Reality lineages are reported by Chia and Reid as practitioner traditions, with dates that the reference shelf partly contradicts.
• Patronage and persecution alternated, from the closures of 955 to the Boxers and the Communist campaigns of 1950–53. Guénon reads Taoism as the esoteric side of the Chinese tradition.