Simple Twists of Fate: The Daoist Body and Its Ming Stephen R. Bokenkamp Indiana University

Perhaps due to the extreme emphasis that Christian traditions accord questions of

individual free will versus predestination, grace versus deeds, modern accounts of the religious

dimensions of ming have tended to place Chinese writers somewhere on the same continuum.

Those who seem to proclaim a determinative role for ming in individual lives end up on the

Calvinist end of the scale while those who deny ming and attempts to foretell it can be placed

near the Pelagianist end. Although words like “free will” or “predestination” will sometimes pop

up in English-language discussions of ming, the intellectual heritage that guides our interests goes

unrecognized.1 Early Chinese thinkers did puzzle over moral cause and effect, over why bad

things happened to good people, etc, so our interest in how they stood on this issues is not

misguided, it is merely that our concerns cause us to miss other features of the complex of issues

surrounding ming. In this essay, I want to explore a few of these aspects of ming that tend to be

invisible on the Calvinist/Pelagian scale. These features, I will argue, inform and, from our

perspective, make sense of, certain medieval Daoist practices.

The ideas I will discuss are these:

1) That ming was inborn and set at birth.

1 The exception close to hand is the excellent essay by Lisa Raphals, “Languages of Fate: Semantic Fields in Chinese and Greek.” Notice, however, that even someone as careful with words as Raphals can still quite unconsciously define fate as “the notion that there is a set or immutable pattern to the world” (emphases mine), despite the fact that the teleological aspects of this definition do not fit at all traditional Chinese

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2) That, as a birthright, ming was often as much a property of families as of individuals.

3) That, once in the social realm, ming was subject to social and political manipulation.

4) That ming was thus adjustable.

Some pre-Daoist Ideas of Ming

In the chapter “Initial Endowments” of his Lun Heng, Wang Chong (27?-91)

writes: AMing is that which is received [from heaven] at birth . . . King Wen was endowed with

ming in the body of his mother. As soon as the king received his ming, inwardly it formed his

nature and outwardly [the shape of] his body. The body, appropriate to the arts of [divination]

by face and bone, is received at birth.@2 The destiny of humans, he argues, appears visibly

in the face and body. In the case of King Wen, the auspicious destiny that awaited him was

expressed in the fact that he had four nipples and a dragon countenance . How could

such things as four nipples have appeared after birth? Thus, Wang reasons, King Wen’s ming

must have been implanted while he was in his mother’s womb.

Wang Chong is well-known for his revisionist, sceptical views of tradition, so his opinions

cannot be taken to represent a broad consensus. Other roughly contemporary texts speak of

ming using metaphors that imply it is something outside the body. One typically “encounters”

accounts of ming, keyed as these latter are to constantly mutating patterns, as Raphals’ findings show (see pp. 21-22, where she reports the close connections of ming with change and “timeliness”).

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or “meets with” / ming. Such familiar ways of speaking about fate might lead us to

conclude that the early Chinese conceptions of ming were fairly similar to our ideas of “fortune”

or “luck.”

But we need to be cautious. The work of Lakoff and Johnson has alerted us to the

surprisingly contradictory metaphorical complexes we adopt in speaking of the self in English and

has pointed out the ways in which each of these complexes constrain thought.3 Even Wang

Chong, with his vehement arguments against the standard notion that actions have any effect on

fate at all, since ming is inborn, himself employs the “encountering fortune” metaphor.4 The only

difference is that he places the external causation at the moment of conception, “as, for instance,

when [the parents] encounter a sudden thunderstorm , so that the child grows

up only to die early.”5

2 Lunheng jiaoshi , annotated by Huang Hui , (Beijing: Zhonghua shuju, 1990), AInitial Endowments ,@ pp. 125-26. I have elided Wang=s proofs. 3 George Lakoff and Mark Johnson, Metaphors We Live By, (Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 1980) and, particularly, Philosophy in the Flesh: The Embodied Mind and its Challenge to Western Thought, (New York: Basic Books, 1999), pp. 267-84. While I will employ some of their insights and terminology, I will generally not discuss the far-ranging conclusions they draw, especially in the latter book. The “Japanese Examples” they adduce on pp. 284-87 of Philosophy in the Flesh , for instance, are drawn from modern Japanese, a language already unmistakably and profoundly altered beginning in the Meiji period by the large influx of Western terminology and translations from Western languages. Further, I am reluctant to assume that the same precise conclusions on human thought processes can be drawn from texts, especially classical Chinese texts that do not seem to represent the spoken language of the authors of those texts. Nonetheless, I find their approach to the functions of metaphor in spoken and written language insightful and useful. 4 Of the three types of ming proposed by contemporary thinkers – standard ming , inborn fate which is not dependent on actions; consequent ming , good or bad fortune that does follow upon human actions; and encountered ming , that good or bad fortune that actually runs counter to good and bad deeds – Wang, who disallows any role at all to deeds in fixing ming, accepts only the first type. Consequent ming is disproven by the numerous historical examples of those known for good or evil who did not receive their just deserts. To explain the apparent injustices of encountered ming, Wang holds that inherent predispositions are also good or evil, so that, for example, an “evil person” who encounters good fortune might have evil predispositions but good natal ming. Lunheng jiaoshi, pp. 46-49. 5 Lunheng jiaoshi, p. 49.

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There were, in fact, several widely spread practices that depended on the notion that

ming was implanted in the womb. Discussions of ming drawing on these beliefs tended tospeak

of it using organicist metaphors, as I have done in the previous sentence, or metallurgic

metaphors, to describe the way in which ming was almost physically a part of the body.

First of all, the technology on which Wang bases his arguments, physiognomy, was

widely practiced and depended, at least in part, on the idea that ontogeny recapitulates

physiology. Wang Fu , in his Qianfu lun, explains the technology in terms of a tree

metaphor. While he does not overtly state it here, he strongly implies that the ming read by the

physiognomist was implanted at birth:

For humans, there is the bone-method, just as there are categories and types for the

myriad things. With wood, for instance, there is always suitability, so that the skillful

carpenter need only base himself on its shape and in each case it will provide something.

The twisted will be suitable for wheels; the straight for a carriage chassis . . .6

Wang Fu thus holds the sagely physiognomer able to judge the appropriate uses for

humans based on physical signs that revealed their endowments with a morphological preciseness

similar to that observed in the natural world. What is native to a person, what makes up their

substance or “timber” / , is the primary locus of their ming.7

6 Qianfu lun , (Zhuzi jicheng ed.), 27:131. 7 Wang Fu’s account of physiognomy also betrays a nuanced understanding of ming. Human actions can influence fate in ways unpredictable to even the most skillful physiognomer. The noble can fail to fulfill their allotted fate and those born under a bad sign can, through moral action, transform their endowments. “But in sum,” he writes, “the bone method is the main way [to determine ming] and configuration and coloration are its signs .” (Qianfu lun, 130-32.) For an account of Wang Fu’s stances on ming and divination in general, see Anne Behnke Kinney, “Predestination and Prognostication n the Ch’ien-fu lu,” Journal of Chinese Religions, 19 (1991), pp. 27-45.

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Another technology, that of obstetric medicine, also provides ample evidence for the

notion that ming was implanted in the womb. Physicians and others who contemplated the

natural order thought they could determine the precise moments in the process of gestation when

individual fate became fixed. For these thinkers, gestation was an exact simulacrum of

cosmogenesis.8 Both depended on the coalescence of yin and yang pneumas in a process likened

to that of the formation and firing of pottery or the melding of metals in the ironworker=s

furnace.9 The form of the fetus, the vessel into which various attributes could subsequently be

poured, was only completed in the third month of gestation. Thus, during the third month, before

the foetus achieved fixed shape, its gender could be changed by various procedures.10 From the

third month on, after the fetus had already received its initial shape and nature, the character of the

child could likewise be disciplined through the techniques known collectively as Afetal training

.@11

8 See Donald Harper, Early Chinese Medical Literature: The Mawangdui Medical Manuscripts, (London: Kegan Paul International, 1998), pp. 378-84, translating the Taichan shu . 9 See Ma Boying , Zhongguo yixue wenhua shi (Shanghai: Renmin chuban she, 1994). Ma betrays a very critical attitude toward early Chinese embryological knowledge, but the theories on the stages of foetal development expressed by early Chinese medical practitioners are in fact very similar to those held by their counterparts in other parts of the world. See Joseph Needham, A History of Embryology, (New York: Abelard-Schumann, 1959), pp. 18-74 10 On the importance of the third month in fixing the gender of the foetus, see Harper, 378-82 and Ma Boying, pp. 641-52. 11 Former Han references to Afoetal education@ stress the activities to be undertaken during the seventh month of pregnancy, but hold that isolation of the pregnant mother from destructive sights and sounds should begin in the third month. (See, for instance, the Dadai Liji ch.3 and Jia Yi=s (201-168 BCE) Xin shu ch. 10). Later sources, perhaps under the influence of early embryological theories, state only that such training should begin in the third month. See, for instance, Yan Zhitui=s (531-590+) Yanshi jiaxun (Shanghai: Guji chubanshe, 1980) p. 25; Sun Simiao=s (581-?682?) Sun zhenren beiji qianjin yaofang , HY 1155, 2:17a and the sources collected by Ma Boying, pp. 652-54. Foetal training included both isolating the mother from inharmonious sights and sounds and attempts to shape the character of the foetus through exposing it to the classics and proper musical sounds, etc.

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These latter technologies, physiognomy and obstetric medicine, betray further aspects of

ming that have little to do with the determinism/free will scale. First, ming was often discussed in

terms not of individuals, but of families. The discovery of genes, chromosomes, and DNA lay in

the future, but even the most casual observer might notice that the fates of families were often

intertwined in inexplicable ways. Wang Chong, for example, states quite seriously that

When an entire family possesses the ming of wealth and honor, they may undertake affairs

of wealth and honor. Those whose physical form does not correspond according to the

bone method will invariably leave [the family] or die and cannot enjoy their good fortune for

long. A family of wealth and honor will employ slaves and servants, raise cattle and horses,

all of which will be quite out of the ordinary. Their slaves will have physiognomies

indicative of long life; their livestock will have the nature to engender numerous offspring;

their fields will possess fertile and quick-ripening grain; and their businesses will own good

stock that sells rapidly.12

Du Mu (803-52) made this familial aspect of ming the basis of his essay against the art of

physiognomy. According to Du, the problem is not that the art is ineffective, but that the

conclusions of the diviners are generally in error. For instance, a diviner had predicted that Yang

Jian (541-604) would be emperor, glory of the Yang clan. But was he really? The dynasty

lasted but thirty-six years and the Yang clan was nearly destroyed as a result.

12 Wang Chong, “Guxiang pian,” ch. 3, p. 116.

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Through Du Mu, we come to see how ming might be related to families not because

families were held to share the same natal destiny or star signs, but because their ming were

somehow intertwined through birth relation.

The clan ming leads easily to a second aspect of ming and efforts directed toward its

determination not often broached in scholarly discussions – its clear relationship to government

and power. This is already implied in the wood metaphor employed by Wang Fu that we

examined above. The art of physiognomy and, to a less acknowledged extent, mantic arts of

ming determination, were used to judge humans and their suitability for political projects. The

questions most often asked were such as these: Would this person make a trustworthy and

capable official? Would that person be worth following in his bid to found a new empire? In

fact, most of what we know about ming in the lives of actual people from our histories centers

on just these issues.13

The problem of discernment, in a corporate society like that of China, was intense.

Trained from birth in ritual and conformity, people could “make their countenances thick”

masking their natures so that it became extremely difficult to judge them. Liu Shao’s Êo (ca

240-50) work on physiognomy for assessing men for office, the Renwu zhi , provides

one well-articulated system for judging people through their body-shape, facial coloration, voice,

action, etc.14 The term ming seldom figures in the work. Rather it is the inborn nature or

predispostions that often forms the subject of investigation . Still, as the common term

13 Although it does not discuss the political import of ming, that import is clear in the evidence presented by Cho-yun Hsu in his “The Concept of Predetermination and Fate in the Han.” Early China, 1(1975), pp. 51-56.

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xingming implies, the two natal endowments were seen as closely linked.

The emphasis on physiognomy in the judgement of people had several consequences,

some of which are evident in the above statements from Wang Chong. The wealthy and well-

regarded did not by chance possess the best slaves, livestock, and farmland. Surely, money and

influence provided some of this and the natural tendency of people to associate with the

prosperous accounted for much of the rest. There is thus, as is often the case, a self-fulfilling

aspect to determinations of ming, especially when prospects are made known through the work

of a famous diviner or respected official.

Finally, despite the fact that ming was held to be implanted at birth and somehow part of

the somatic endowment of the individual, it was subject to adjustment, particularly before birth.

As we saw above, it was held possible to alter fate in the most fundamental way by changing the

sex of the foetus in the third month, to alter it by foetal education or through correct burial of the

afterbirth, or, most subtly, to determine the ming of a child through computing his or her birth

signs. In the latter case, I use the verb “determine” in its full range of senses, since, as I have

argued above, the very complexity of these systems, together with their high valuation in the

society, ensured that ming was manufactured more than assessed.

All of the above rarely discussed aspects of early Chinese practices surrounding ming will

come to the fore in the Daoist texts examined below.

14 Tang Yongtong , “Du Renwu zhi ,” Tang Yongtong xueshu lunwen ji

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Daoism and ming

Daoism, as we are often reminded in its scriptures, is the religion of life, concerned with

extending life, altering human destiny, and realizing the avoidance of death. In the major textual

legacies of early Daoism -- extending from works associated with the early Celestial Masters

through those of the Shangqing and Lingbao schools -- the fact that heaven=s decrees might limit

the human life-span is portrayed as a problem that has been solved. In that the religion promoted

its self-cultivation practices with promises of longevity and death avoidance, fatalism of any sort

could logically play no part. Early Daoists proscribed the mantic arts and severely criticized their

practitioners.

From the beginnings of the organized religion, Celestial Master Daoists of the second and

third centuries held that practice, including but not limited to confession of sins, various psycho-

physiological rituals, and the performance of good deeds, determined individual longevity and

transcendence. Heaven did decree fate, but that decree would be altered through the

accomplishment of such practices. Hosts of celestial record-keepers were put into place to make

certain that Daoist strivings were duly registered. Later Daoists were to modify the system,

particularly with regard to popular mantic arts. As Peter Nickerson has fulsomely demonstrated,

, (Beijing: Zhonghua, 1983), pp. 196-213.

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Daoists eventually reached accomodation with the most popular practices and entered into

competition with fortune-tellers and the like for the provision of ritual services.15

Despite such doctrinal slippage, the predominant Daoist stance on the issue of ming

would thus seem to be the third of the three Campany discusses. As one Shangqing scripture

states forthrightly:

For registering the living and the dead, [celestial officials] have white records and black

records, and rolls of slips in cinnabar and vermilion. They receive the records of the

living, in proper order from beginning to end, as well as the records of the dead from

first to last to compare with them. In total there are six thousand slips, all recording the

fate of a single person...It is not the case that [they] have ever mistakenly inscribed

anyone=s name.16

There could thus be no mistake. . . and no possibility of human fiddling with the records.

The question of how the other two approaches Campany has mentioned—those involving

subterfuge, body substitutes, and other forms of shijie—came to be accepted into Daoism,

primarily through the agency of what Ge Hong called ATaiqing@ belief will not concern me here.

What is important to the issues we are pursuing is that Daoists could—and did—declare

themselves immune to ming, the life-decrees that bound ordinary mortals. Daoists did of course

die, but their deaths were Aapparent@ rather than actual, cloaked in technological explanations or

15 Peter S. Nickerson, Taoism, Death, and Bureaucracy in Early Medieval China, (Ph.D. dissertation: University of California, Berkeley, 1996), pages 453-536. 16 Stephen R. Bokenkamp, Early Daoist Scriptures, (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1997), pp. 359-60. I have repositioned and truncated the last sentence for rhetorical effect, but the intent of the passage is as I have presented it.

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in obscure religious metaphors, entered as evidence that they were not subject to fate or offered

proudly to prove that they were in fact masters of it.17 Concern over fate might be highlighted to

draw folks to the religion, but once in possession of spirit-registers and empowered by the

scriptures, they were apparently to have no doubts on the matter. Daoists were those who could

proclaim AMy destiny lies with me, and not in heaven!@18

This self-assurance depended in large part on an understanding of the physiological bases

of fate that we have examined in non-Daoist contexts. This may seem an odd claim. The

“bureaucratic” nature of the Daoist religion is well-studied; their claims of immunity to the fate

awaiting the common run of folks is well-know. We know that from early times, all sorts of

spirits, celestial bureaux, and a pantheon of scribbling record-keepers, were held to be in charge

of the human books of life and death, comprising, as we have seen in the passage cited above,

over “six thousand slips” on the fate of each person. Daoists claimed special knowledge of (and

influence with) this bureaucracy. But that is not the end of the story.

Studies of Daoism tend to focus on the judicial apparatus governing human destiny

because this is the face the texts of the religion most often turned to the world. In distinguishing

their practice from cognate practices of common Chinese religion, Daoist texts stress cosmology

17 See, among other sources, Isabelle Robinet, "Metamorphosis and Deliverance from the Corpse in Taoism," History of Religions 19.1(1979), pp. 57-70. 18 That ming is subject to human control is, for instance, the central argument of the first section of the Yangxing yanming lu (HY 837, 1:1a-11b). Attributed to Tao Hongjing (456-536), this essay cites a variety of early sources and authorities to demonstrate the proposition that destiny is subject to human control. The proclamation cited here is attributed to a AScripture of Transcendence@ (HY 837, 1:9b2-3). The same claim is also to be found in the Xisheng jing (HY 666, 3:6a9) and the Yunji qiqian

(HY 1026, 59:9b3).

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and the overarching nature of their bureaucratic pantheon. 19 Nonetheless, the Daoist control of

life-span depended on a somatic locus of ming and deployed psychosomatic techniques to alter

it.

This seems to have been true from the earliest days of the religion. For instance, the early

3rd century CE Celestial Master commentary to the Laozi, the Xiang’er, speaks of record-

keeping spirits as the very ones who inhabit the body. These inner spirits might ascend to heaven

to report the life-shortening misdeeds of the person or, if properly nourished with qi, might remain

within the body to provide long life and a safe passage through death.

While the ideas that inform the Xiang’er Commentary are not fully explicated and thus

somewhat less than fully clear to the modern researcher, later Daoist texts discuss in plain

language the supposed make-up of the body and ways to extend life that depend on its physical

makeup.

Below, we will focus on several ritual and meditative techniques developed by Yang Xi

(330-?386?) around 370 CE or perhaps by later imitators. These practices responded to

contemporary belief, to scientific knowledge, and particularly to views of the human body with its

inborn ming.

Daoist Embryology

19 On this point, see Peter S. Nickerson, Taoism, Death, and Bureaucracy in Early Medieval China, (Ph.D.

dissertation: University of California, Berkeley, 1996).

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Embryology was important to Daoist practitioners because they were in the business of

recreating their own embryonic selves through various meditation techniques. Daoist techniques

for the creation of the perfected embryo involved the ingestion of celestial emanations, the

merging of these with bodily forces, and the accomplishment of generative tasks in certain parts of

the body, all accompanied by precise visualizations.20 In other words, except for the

visualizations, Daoists were to do precisely what their mothers had been enjoined to do before

their birth. This is signalled in some of the texts we shall examine through their explicit

comparisons of the Daoist work with that of normal gestation. And, even with regard to

visualization, there are parallels. While Daoists were expected to envision the gods and colored

qi that vivified their bodies, pregnant women were cautioned to avoid disturbing sights –

dwarves, hunchbacks, the ill, etc. – that might influence the development of the foetus.

Of the examples we might explore, the first method that will draw our attention here is

that found in the Central Scripture of the Nine Perfected , one of the scriptures of

Yang Xi.21

20 For accounts of such practices, see Isabelle Robinet, Taoist Meditation: The Mao-Shan Tradition of Great Purity, Julian F. Pas and Norman J. Girardot, tr., (Albany: State University of New York Press, 1993), pp. 139-42, inter alia. 21 On this scripture, see Isabelle Robinet, "Introduction au Kieou-tchen Tchong-king," Bulletin of the Society for the Study of Chinese Religions, No. 7 (Fall 1979), pp. 24-45 and her La rϑvϑlation du Shangqing dans l'histoire du taoςsme, (Paris: Publications de l'Ecole FranΗaise d'ExtrΛme-Orient, #137, 1984), V. 2, pp. 67-76. As Robinet notes, the text that survives in the Daoist canon has clearly undergone revision, but the sections with which I will deal here are attested in the late-sixth century Daoist collectanea, the Wushang biyao. Another version of the exercise, found in the Dunhuang manuscript, Pelliot #2751, is possibly a fragment of Tao Hongjing’s annotated collection of revealed material, the Dengzhen yinjue, originally comprised of 24 juan of which only three survive in the canon. Whatever its origin, the Dunhuang manuscript seems to be an expurgated version of the practice. While I will make some reference to the annotations found in the Dunhuang text, these can only be tentative, as the photographic reproductions of the manuscript to which I have access are very unclear and the ms. is severely damaged.

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According to the canonical version of this scripture (HY 1365), the Nine Perfected are

the externalized cloudsouls of a celestial deity, the Yellow Lord Lao of the Center .

At certain times in nine months of the year, the adept is to visualize this deity, together with

another stellar god, Grand Unity, descending into his body to join with the five main bodily spirits.

Together, these form a single deity, who should be guided by meditation into the appropriate part

of the body to rejuvenate it.

The inner god formed by this method, the text claims, differs in type from those interior

spirits like the three cloudsouls and seven whitesouls that are naturally born in a person through

the qi provided by earthly parents. In fact, “Parents only know the beginnings of gestation, and

are unaware of the arrival of the Lord Thearch and the Five Spirits.”22 With such claims, Daoists

differentiated their practices from the more mundane work of prenatal care, claiming that the

spirits with which they worked were inaccessible to human parents.

With certain anomalies, the nine parts of the body are the same as those we would expect

from contemporary medical literature, but remade in an order the reverse of that found in texts

on gestation. That is to say, the Daoist practice remakes the body in an order that brings it back

to the moment of conception, finally leaving the practitioner with a more etherialized, “primordial”

self.23

22 HY 1365, 1:2b5-6. 23 The medical texts of this period detailing the development of the embryo tend to follow the tradition of the Mawangdui manuscript studied by Harper. In these accounts, the full human form replete with the five viscera is completed during the seventh month of gestation, but the development of various bodily constituents is associated with the five phases in the xiangke order. (See Nakamura Sh∩hachi , Gogy∩ taigi k∩ch , (Tokyo: Meitoku, 1984), pp. 193-94 for the relevant citations). While Daoist scriptures divide the creation of the five viscera into five separate months, the five-phase associations of the viscera nonetheless accord with medical accounts of the influence of the five phases in gestation.

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Significantly, one of the points at which the Jiuzhen zhongjing differs from the dominant

medical view is in its placement of the bones near the end of gestation; that is, according to its

reverse order, in the second month of practice. This is also the point at which the adept=s new

ming is discussed in the following terms24:

At midnight, the time of life-giving qi, again practice [the above method]. On the days of the

Nine Perfected, the Thearch Lord, Grand Unity and the Five Spirits will spontaneously merge

into a single grand spirit, not waiting for you to first visualize them. [The spirit] will have the

shape of an infant and should be [visualized?] employing the same methods as for the Nine

Perfected. On this occasion the nine cloudsouls and seven whitesouls will transform, the five

Spirits will merge, the Thearch Lord will change nine times, and Grand Unity will establish

himself in the three regions of the body. Together, they will grasp your tallies of life and fix the

dark and clear in your registers [of fate], so that you will live long and ascend to the halls of

heaven without dying. This way is a dark secret, treasured by the higher numinous powers.

Among these various descriptions of embryological development, only the Jiuzhen zhongjing departs from the xiangke order of the five-phases found in the Mawangdui text. The Jiuzhen zhongjing gives the spleen, lungs, and kidneys in the xiangsheng order. The heart is positioned in the first month since, by medical accounts as well as the Taijing zhongji , the conciousness and will are the last to be formed, resulting in fetal movement. I am unable to account at present for the Jiuzhen zhongjing’s placement of the liver in its process of deconstruction. Nonetheless, its goal of reversing the process of gestation is explicit. In addition to stating outright that, at the end of its procedures, the adept is to summon the god who forms the placenta (HY 1365, 1:8b-9a), the Jiuzhen zhongjing also places the creation of the bones in the second month, while the medical texts place this development as the final step of body-creation in the seventh month. 24 Here we need to note that, while the rejuvenation of the bones is placed almost correctly according to standard medical accounts (we would expect the third month), the implantation of ming is incorrectly timed. According to standard medical practices, the Jiuzhen zhongjing should have timed this procedure during the seventh or eighth month of its auto-gestation. It seems that in this case Yang Xi was influenced not by medical belief, but by the art of physiognomy, since the bones are that feature of the body most closely associated with the determination of fate by physiognomy . In fact, physiognomy is called “the method of the bones” nearly as often as by the more proper name “imaging” . See, for instance, the works by Wang Chong and Wang Fu cited above.

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Those who do not already have Transcendent records will not hear of it; those who do not

possess inborn affinity will never see it.25

In this way, the Daoist fiddling with ming is conceptually integrated with its claim of

access to a bureaucratic and orderly otherworld. It is not that the creation of a perfected embryo

ever transgresses the system of celestial record-keepers, but rather that any adept who is

introduced to the practice has, by virtue of that fact alone, already achieved the “bones of a

Transcendent.”

The second method for the creation of a perfected embryo that will draw our attention,

found in the Taijing zhongji, has been described by Isabelle Robinet.26 It is a method for

untying the “embryonic knots,” twelve sources of death that take root in the human body as it is

being given life in the womb. The method, according to Robinet’s precise description:

. . .consists in making the adept relive his embryonic life in relation to the divine and

cosmic model. . . Starting from the anniversary of his conception, the adept will,

therefore, relive his embryonic development by receiving, month by month, the breaths

of the nine primordial heavens. During each of the nine monthly periods, the adept

invokes the Original Father and Mysterious Mother while visualizing,

simultaneously, the King of the [appropriate] primordial heaven. . . Having received

the King’s breath, the adept now reactualizes it. At the same time, the King descends

25 HY 1365, 1:4b3-5a3. 26 Isabelle Robinet, Taoist Meditation: The Mao-shan Tradition of Great Purity, (Albany: State University of New York Press, 1993), pp. 140-43. It seems that this scripture, or a version of it, may have preceded the Shangqing revelations of Yang Xi. See Robinet’s La rϑvϑlation du Shangqing, Vol 2, pp. 171-74.

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into the [appropriate] bodily cavity.”27

This meditation, as can be seen from the chart below, generally follows the standard

medical accounts of fetal development.28 The most significant difference, again, is that the

revivification of the bones is placed in the third month, rather than the seventh or eighth. Not

surprisingly, in the incantations that accompany the monthly visualizations and describe in fanciful

terms what is supposed to occur, we learn that this is the month in which the adept’s ming is to

be re-established and recorded in the celestial books.29 Once again, it seems to be the close

association of bones with ming, together with medical assurances that ming was fixed in the third

month, that led to this rearrangement in the order of imagined fetal development.

Much more of importance could be gleaned from these two meditations. We might, for

instance, explore the ways in which they represent a continuation of the medical program of

mapping the secrets of the female body through appropriating to the male generative body also

the potencies of the female gestational body.30 Yang Xi, after all, claimed to have received his

texts from female divinities. In keeping with our more modest project, however, we might simply

27 Robinet, Taoist Meditation, p. 141. 28 Other differences are these: The initial stages of embryonic development, which the medical texts describe as lumps of fat, suet, and the like, are replaced in the Taijing zhongji by inchoate brain and visceral matter, important to Daoism by virtue of their association with heaven and its primal pneumas. Secondly, while the Taijing zhongji follows the xiangke order of the five phases, as do standard medical texts, it associates each with one of the five organs and slightly rearranges them so that fire, and the heart, are produced in the ninth month. One supposes that this rearrangement is based on some notion that human cognition and will are the last to develop, though I have located no text that plainly so states. 29 In the incantation for the second month, we read that “The Thearchical Lord orders the life-records; Grand Unity inscribes the [forthcoming] birth” . This is preparatory to the actual formation of the records in the third month, when “The Director of Destinies inscribes the life-records; In the [Palace of] Eastern Florescence [=Tai Shan], I am recorded as a Transcendent” . (HY 1371, 18b-19a.) In none of the other incantations are the life-records mentioned.

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note that these procedures replicate the contributions of human mothers, but also of human

fathers. Indeed, there are clear indications in these Shangqing texts that actual parents had little to

contribute when it came to the sorts of ming that mattered most. According to the Taijing

zhongji, the body that counted, with its eventual fate, comes from the nine heavens through the

invocation of the Original Father and Mysterious Mother. The “birth scene” of the tenth month

shows this clearly. Three times in the tenth month, the adept is to visualize the Original father of

the Nine heavens entering his Muddy Pellet [the brain] and the Mysterious Mother entering his

Gate of Destiny [the area between the pubis and navel]. Transforming respectively into green and

yellow qi, these two deities will course through the body to join in the Scarlet Palace [the heart].

Then :

The blue qi will transform into a newborn; the yellow into a phoenix. The phoenix will hold

in its mouth the Flowing Essence of Nine Elixirs, the Talisman for Securing ming, which it

will place into the infant’s suckling mouth. Having received the talisman, the infant will

transform into a sun, returning to the top of the head. The phoenix will transform into the

moon, descending into the Gate of Destiny. The light of these two will shine upon one

another brilliantly, reflecting throughout the body.31

The scene is nearly one of auto-eroticism. Hidden and mysterious, yet a source of

power, the ming became something over which the individual Daoist could claim control. The

scriptures that have been our sources for these fascinating glimpses into the private meditation

30 These terms are adopted from Charlotte Furth, A Flourishing Yin: Gender in China’s Medical History, 960-1665, (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1999). See especially her introduction to some of the issues on pp. 216-23.

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chambers of early Daoists do not reveal much of the social effects of such practices. The

constant injunctions of the spirits that the letter of these practices should be kept secret and not

revealed to the profane on pain of wrecking the destinies of both the practitioner and his or her

family reveal two things. First, Daoists were apt to let their light shine when it came to the benefits

they hoped to gain from their practice – indeed that public knowledge that mysterious powers

were moving in such a person’s life must have been one of the benefits. Second, families were

implicated, even in these very private practices.

We might expect more on the public face of Daoist ming practice from their encounters

with the art of physiognomy.

Daoist Phsyiognomy

As I said above, early Celestial Master Daoists seem to have regarded ming as

provisional and mutable. In line with this, they specifically denied that destiny could be read from

the appearance of the human body. Criticizing Confucian Asages@ who Ameasure themselves

only against chapter and verse@ of their Adeviant writings,@ the Xiang=er commentary to the

Laozi complains that Asuch sages say that Transcendents already have their fates [ming]

inscribed on their bones and that this is not something that one might achieve through [good]

31 HY 1371, 25a1-5.

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deeds.@32 For the early Celestial Masters, somatic predestination acted as counter-incentive to

the physiological and social practices they wished to promote.33

In the Shangqing scriptures of the second half of the fourth century, however, the

principles of body divination acquire a new prominence. The best example of this is found in the

Purple Texts Inscribed by the Spirits , one of the scriptures composed by Yang Xi

for his aristocratic patrons. The Purple Texts describe a list of Atranscendent signs@ that

provide sure indication that an individual=s celestial registers are kept in specific palaces of

heaven. 34 This list is presented by Lord Azure Lad , the deity charged with descending

to gather the elect into the heavens, saving them from the immanent cataclysms attendant on the

end of the present world-age. Those possessing the signs given in the text are thus numbered

among the saved.

Some of these physical signs of transcendence are comparable to those reported in non-

Daoist sources as having distinguished the sage-kings of antiquity.35 Shun , for instance, was

32 Bokenkamp, Early Daoist Scriptures, p. 107. See also pp. 58-62 for the date and possible authorship of the commentary. 33 In this respect, they agreed with the Confucian philosopher Xunzi , who also argued that reliance on the art of physiognomy distracted from what was most important in moral education. See John Knoblock, Xunzi: A Translation and Study of the Complete Works, Vol. I, (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1988), pp. 196-205. This minority view was expressed occasionally -- see for instance Du Mu=s (803-52) ALun xiang @ (Quan Tang wen , 754:5a-b) -- though the art of physiognomy maintained its prestige in later times. See Richard J. Smith, Fortune-Tellers and Philosophers: Divination in Traditional Chinese Society, (Boulder: Westview Press, 1991), pp. 187-201 and Livia Kohn, “A Textbook of Physiognomy: The Tradition of the Shenxiang quanbian,’ Asian Folklore Studies, 45.2(1986), pp. 227-58, for numerous later treatises and famous practitioners. 34 Bokenkamp, Early Daoist Scriptures, pp. 355-66. 35 See, for instance, Wang Chong=s account of the art of physiognomy, the AGu xiang pian,@ (Lunheng jiaoshi, pp. 108-23). Wang is, in turn, citing various of the Aweft-texts.@

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said by Wang Chong to have sported double pupils in each eye,36 while the Purple Texts reports

that those higher Transcendents whose names are transcribed in the palaces of Fangzhu have

square pupils that seem to emit purple beams of light.37 Beyond such readily discernable

physical signs—constellation-shaped markings, moles, strange protuberances, and other oddities

of appearance—though, the Daoist text reports a number of physical characteristics that could

only be known by those possessed of x-ray vision—hearts with nine orifices, azure livers with

purple striations, hidden bones in the genitals, and even five-colored auras emanating from the top

of the head.

Here we move beyond the domain of mundane physiognomy, which, at least according to

its manuals, attempted to read the place of individual bodies in the ordered cosmos as one would

read the five-phase correlations of planets through the outward evidence of their coloration, and

into the realms of religious gnosis. For our present purposes, it is important to note that, while

many members of Chinese society believed that fate might be seen in the form and face, Daoists,

who laid claim to knowledge of the unseen, tended to relocate the art of physiognomy within their

own realms of expertise. Outward signs prove only the barest of indications to the wonderful

mysteries enfolded by the perfected body.

The Daoist account transgresses the rules of mundane physiognomic science in yet

another way. In the Purple Texts, the appearance of the body proves not to be determinative of

one=s ultimate fate. Mundane physiognomy could not be altered after birth. As we have seen,

36 Lunheng, p. 110. 37 Early Daoist Scriptures, p. 356.

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however, Daoist techniques included those that replicated what occurred in the womb, with even

more marvelous results. So, then, it makes sense that physiognomic signs might be altered. But

this is not what the author of the Purple Texts had in mind. The account of Transcendent signs is

preceded by Lord Azure Lad=s statement that these markings are indication only of whether or

not one is “blocked” or “urged on” by merit inherited from one=s ancestors. As we know

from this and other Shangqing texts, particularly important for one’s ultimate ming were the deeds

and misdeeds of one’s ancestor in the seventh generation inclusive. Once again, then, ming turns

out to have more to do with family than one might have supposed.

Still, blockages may be removed and, as the text makes particularly clear, the signs of

Transcendence may be eradicated through one=s failure to preserve the integrity of the body,

through practicing the psychosomatic meditations proffered in the scriptures.

Why, then, mention signs at all if they are largely hidden and, at any rate, subject to

alteration? The Purple Texts might suggest an answer itself. Toward the end of its discussion

of fortunate physiognomies, the Lord Azure Lad declares

If one lacks these signs and these actions, though he be a renowned hero whose

aspiration is to swallow the Four Seas, or one of vast energy and boundless might whose

influence overtops the clouds; though he be one of profound knowledge with flying brush

and disputatious speech or one of exceptionally elegant action whos might impose order on

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the unseen and clear away doubt, whose mouth speaks of Nothingness and whose eyes

flash to the eight directions—still he does not have the qualities of a Transcendent.”38

Included in this characterization are all those most valued in contemporary Jin society,

men of fine families and extensive learning, generals, practitioners of “dark learning,” and

government officials and men who possessed the correct signs according to conventional

physiognomy. It is not, I think, too much to imagine that Daoists might have thought to compete

with these on the basis of their more mysterious physiognomic markings.

Conclusion

What are we to make of these Daoist accomodations with the physiological bases of

fate? To what extent were Daoists prone to acknowledge that the physical body itself

determined destiny -- that ontogeny recapitulates physiology? The evidence is at first sight

interestingly contradictory. The Purple Texts follows the art of physiognomy to reveal that the

ming of the Daoist body, like that of other bodies, is inscribed in its form, but then precedes to

bury those inscriptions so deeply that only another Daoist would know where to look. The

Jiuzhen zhongjing and the Taijing zhongji promise the total remaking of the Daoist body, but

then follow medical accounts to stipulate that ming must still be fixed at the correct, scientifically-

determined moment, even in auto-gestation.

These struggles with contemporary views of the human body began to occur within Daoism

38 Early Daoist Scriptures, p. 361.

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precisely at the time when the religion began to refashion itself so as to appeal to the upper

classes of society. The Celestial Masters of the third and early fourth centuries, from the evidence

available to us, seem to have denied that ming was in any way inscribed into the body. But for

those intent upon spreading the religion among the literati, who held precise, though equally

mystical, views concerning the make-up of the body and their own heaven-granted status, it was

impossible to deny at least some features of the constellation of ideas concerning somatic ming.

Indeed, Daoists seem to have found ming and its manipulation useful in much the same

ways it was useful in the society at large. The Daoist body might play host to the very deities who

controlled human ming, but Shangqing Daoists found it necessary to speak of some of the ways

their outward appearance might give evidence of their secret strivings. We have speculated on

their reasons for doing so, reasons having to do with the adoption of the religion among higher

social strata, and have seen some of the ways ming was implicated in the fate of families, even in

what seem wholly individual meditations. These latter two aspects would intensify in the years

following the revelations to Yang Xi, with new Daoist scriptures that more fully incorporated

Buddhist ideas. These texts would begin to speak of an “original destiny” that was

implanted in one’s former lives and not, as in the case of the Shangqing scriptures, by one’s

ancestors. Then, Daoist practitioners, who by virtue of their superior orginal destinies had come

into contact with the scriptures, could turn this merit to good use for the salvation of their

ancestors and families. But that is another chapter.

Accounts of Fetal Development month Taichan shu Wenzi Ishinpo taijing zhongji jiuzhen zhongjing

1 flowing into form first shape/fat beginning shape Muddy Pellet (brain) heart ¬y - - 2 lard pulse lard viscera bones 3 suet embryo foetus bones blood 4 water/blood foetus water/blood lungs liver - - - - 5 fire/pneuma muscles fire/pneumas liver spleen - - - - 6 metal/muscle bones metal/muscle, bones gall lungs - - - 7 wood/bone shape wood/marrow spleen kidneys - - - - 8 earth/skin first movement earth/skin kidneys gall - - -

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9 stone/hairs activity stone/hair heart muddy pellet (brain) - - -