So the topic that we'll be working on today continues the comparison of Buddhism and Daoism. We've compared their scriptures, their rituals, their impact on literature and today we're going to be looking at their relative impacts on sacred geography, and once again we'll be seeing how different they are. So this will be the last time that we are in fact using <i>Early Chinese Religion Part II</i> on the Period of Division. So the second great period of paradigm shift, this is our last stop on our path of looking at it. So today's chapter is written by Gil Raz, it's simply called "Daoist Sacred Geography," and Gil Raz is a professor of Daoist Studies at Dartmouth University in the United States. He tells us that sacred sites in early Daoism are either mountains or isles in the sea —the famous islands in the Eastern Sea that the First Emperor supposedly sent a young virgin boys and girls to discover. In these places—the mountains and isles in the sea— immortals dwell and seekers of immortality must go, to find herbs and minerals, but also to encounter the gods and receive from them revelation. Once again the importance, the centrality of revelation in the production of Daoist scripture. And I quote from Gil Raz: "Daoists emphasized the inner rather than outer aspects of mountains. They perceived that the clouds ringing the peaks and the potentialities hidden in the womb of the earth merged within the secret grottoes of the mountains to produce the gold, jade, and minerals necessary for producing elixirs…" In other words, for producing the substances necessary to be ingested for attaining immortality. "These hidden precincts were also sites for revelation and instruction… Some mountains and their inner realms were indeed only accessible through meditative journeys." And we're going to be seeing exactly what this means —so the exploration of the inside of the mountain is in fact the exploration of the inside of the human subject: "Caves are thus perceived as passages to the inner realm, the pervasive and fecund emptiness which is the Dao." And so Raz concludes, "We should view Daoist sacred geography as primarily an inner, meditative cosmography, rather than a map of the landscape or a topography." In other words, Daoist sacred geography is the perfect illustration of the Daoist exploration of the imagination and the human subject —and, as we will see, of its roots in <i>chenwei</i> discourse. I remind you, <i>chenwei</i> are these apocrypha, these [weft] as opposed to the [warp] texts of the Classics that became so important for metaphysical speculation in the Han dynasty. Already in the <i>Shanhaijing</i>, in the Warring States period, mountains were the homes of the gods. But in the Eastern Han—that's the Latter Han, the first two centuries of our era— exploration of ancient beliefs, interiorization was the order of the day, as may be seen in Xu Shen's definition of the word "mountain." Xu Shen I remind you is the author of this great first dictionary, the <i>Shuowen jiezi</i> 說文解字, explaining characters. His definition of the word "mountain," where it is the inside of the mountain that is of interest, not its outside. And I quote: "Mountain is to diffuse; this means that mountains are able to diffuse and spread Qi"—vital energy—"thus producing the myriad creatures." Myriad creatures, of course, always that term <i>wanwu</i> that we have referred to many times. The Dao gives birth to the one, the one to the two, the two to the three, and the three to the myriad creatures, and we'll see reappearing that notion of three and its relationship to the production of the myriad creatures. But here what is important is to see that Qi while it's the clouds above that bring rain on the outside —and of course this is very important to agricultural China— but even more important to the Daoist is the Qi that is circulating inside the mountains and that spreads out from the mountains and produces the myriad creatures. A second century <i>chenwei</i> text goes even further. It says, "As for mountains, they contain and accumulate Qi. Thereby they accumulate essence and store clouds, and protruding rocks spread and emerge": so the creative nature, the womblike nature of vital energy lodging inside the mountains and then producing things. Very similar discourse may be found in an early description of the Heavenly Masters system of 24 <i>zhi</i> 治, sometimes translated "parishes," sometimes translated "dioceses." In fact, the story of the 24 dioceses or parishes is a key part of the story of Daoist sacred geography. In this case, these are real places, most of them in Sichuan. Very quickly the 24 will become 28. Why 28? Because that way they can be linked to the 28 <i>xiu</i> 宿 or the 28 celestial mansions in the sky. Okay? But in any case, the 24 parishes constitutes a totality. As we've seen, there are 24 <i>jieqi</i> of which the year is composed, so the cycle of time and then this perfect church-state of the Heavenly Masters focused in Sichuan—what is now Sichuan—with its 24 parishes, <i>zhi</i>. And he [Raz] quotes a text from this early period, "The function of the parishes was 'to distribute the primal, original, and inaugural pneumas, and administer the people'." Let's stop a moment there! Primal, original, and inaugural pneumas—<i>xuan, yuan, shi, sanqi</i> 玄元始三氣. This is absolutely key to the entire early Daoist Heavenly Master vision of the cosmos, that these three primordial energies in their chaotic mixture is what precisely produces all things. So it's the 24 <i>zhi</i>, the 24 parishes, which are distributing these primordial energies and also thereby to <i>zhimin</i> 治民 so the <i> ershisi zhi</i> 二十四治—the 24 <i>zhi</i> or ordering places—are to order the people, <i>zhimin</i>. As Raz points out in discussing a text of Lu Xiujing from the fifth century, the term <i>zhi</i>, "conventionally translated as parish" or diocese, also means to administer, to manage, and to heal. And we've just added another: to order, as opposed to disorder. Again I quote from Gil Raz: "Thus, the terminology and connotation of 'parish', <i>zhi</i>, fully represents the basic claims of Celestial Master Daoism itself as a cosmic administration established in order to rectify and heal" —order, reorder—"the corrupt state of humanity." The polysemy of the word <i>zhi</i> is neatly captured in a very early text, the late third-century BC <i>Lüshi chunqiu</i> 呂氏春秋. I quote: "Ordering or governing," <i>zhi</i>, "the state is like ordering or healing the body." Very simple in Chinese, <i>zhiguo</i> 治國—order the state— <i>zhishen ye</i> 治身也, is the same as ordering the body. And this statement is made throughout history frequently to emperors by Daoists when the emperor inquires of him, what is the essence of Daoism, how can I use it to govern my, the empire? And that will be the response: <i>zhiguo, zhishen ye</i>, governing the country is like governing one's own body, ordering one's own body. And an early Daoist scriptural commentary on one of the Lingbao scriptures states it even more succinctly. It says: "<i>shen</i> 身—the body—<i>shan ye</i> 山也 is a mountain." And here I want to just introduce an idea which is very ancient. That is the idea that when a king —because we're not yet in the time of emperors— when a king dies, a very special verb is used. That verb is <i>beng</i> 崩, which has a mountain up on top and the character for <i>peng</i> 朋, which obviously gives the sound to the word. When a king dies, only for his death is the verb beng used, so it means like a mountain which collapses. Okay? And when after Mao Zedong died in 1976 there was a huge earthquake, many people thought in exactly those same terms: the great dragon, the great Son of Heaven has died and this is associated with seismic activity. Okay, so that's for a sovereign, when he dies he is associated with the mountain collapsing. But the Daoists are not interested in this outer mountain, they're interested in the inner mountain, that is to say that space of creativity. And this then reminds us of what the Laozi says: "The sage is for the belly, not for the eyes." That is to say he's for that creative, digestive process that goes on inside the subject, not for what the eyes or the ears can bring into the subject. As it [Mencius] said, <i>wanwu douzainei</i> 萬物都在內 —all ten thousand things are complete in myself.
