Yangsheng 養生 as ‘making a living’ in the Zhuangzi

ABSTRACT

The story of the butcher Pao Ding is one of the best known from the Zhuangzi 莊子. The key concept in this story is yangsheng 養生. This has been understood as involving the preservation of life through various methods of cultivation. However, one insightful perspective has yet to be considered: work. This article sets the stage for understanding yangsheng in terms of work by appealing to Western and Eastern understandings thereof. It then locates the Zhuangzi in contemporary discourse on yangsheng showing that it rejects that concerned with regulating the senses in search of life and accepts that concerned with the activities constitutive of livelihoods. This article then analyzes the relationship between sheng 生 and xing 性 to show that yangsheng is best understood as ‘making a living’ that emerges in the process of individual and collective lives as they unfold in various contexts.

KEYWORDS:

• Zhuangzi
• Pao Ding
• yangsheng養生
• xing性
• work

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Notes

1. All translations herein of first- and second-hand Chinese sources are my own; all translations of the Zhuangzi and other classical texts follow their corresponding Zhonghua Shuju 中華書局 or Shangwu Yinshuguan 商務印書館 editions as found in the references Chen (2003, 2007), Liu (1989) and Xu (2020).

2. This way of understanding Pao Ding goes back at least to the Song dynasty in such commentors as Lin Xinyi 林希逸 (2012, p. 52).

3. Yang Rur-bin 楊儒賓 (2016) has characterized the Zhuangzi’s thought as a ‘philosophy of action’ (xingdong zhexue 行動哲學) (p. 312) and Møllgaard (2007) has described it as a ‘metaphysics of action’ (pp. 39–42).

4. Mou Zongsan 牟宗三 (2003a, pp. 21–26), Xu Fuguan 徐復觀 (2001, pp. 132–135) and Roger Ames and David Hall (2001, pp. 11–15) all stress the importance of ‘creativity’ in Chinese philosophy.

5. Arendt is not alone in making this point, for example, Sartre (2010, p. 141) and Nishida Kitarō 西田幾多郎 (2012, pp. 103–175) both discuss human facticity or historicity.

6. This is why Ames prefers the term ‘human becoming’ over ‘human being’ (2021, pp. 147–153).

7. Tang Junyi 唐君毅 (2016) has said: ‘The Chinese say “our world” but not “a world” and neither do they say “the world”. They simply say “world”, “heavenly and earthly”, or “world as such” without adding any articles to them’ (p. 81).

8. See Graham (1986, pp. 7–67) and Ding Sixin 丁四新 (2020, pp. 70–79) for more on this topic.

9. For a greater discussion on Yang Zhu, see Xu Fuguan 徐復觀 (2013, pp. 381–393), Angus Graham (1990, pp. 135–137) and Meng Peiyuan 蒙培元 (2000, pp. 222–226).

10. Other than once in the ‘Yangshengzhu’ chapter and once in the ‘Dasheng’ chapter, the term yangsheng appears one more time in the ‘Rangwang 讓王’ (Abdicating Kingship) chapter. For more on the yangsheng in the ‘Dasheng’ chapter, see Franklin Perkins (2019, pp. 15–32).

11. Regarding the translation of de as ‘ethos’, see Zheng Kai 鄭開 (2009, p. 222).

12. The Tang dynasty commentator Yang Jing 楊倞 (or Yang Liang) connects the Xunzi and the Zhuangzi when he comments that the yangsheng of the people refers to the ‘followers of Zhuangzi’ (zhuangsheng zhi tu 莊生之徒) (X. Wang, 2010, p. 129).

13. Zhang Dainian 張岱年 (2017) lists three meanings for sheng: to generate (shengcheng 生成), life (shengming生命), and to live (shengcun 生存) (p. 169).

14. Watson (2013, p. 45), Graham (1989b, p. 86), and Zipyorn (2009, p. 44) all translate this line in a similar fashion. However, I think an alternative reading could draw on the ‘Great Commentary’ of the Book of Changes that says ‘the great virtue of the heavenly and the earthly is to generate’ (tiandi zhi dade yue sheng 天地之大德曰生). From this perspective, this xian tiandi sheng 先天地生 rather than meaning ‘born before the heavenly and earthly’ would instead indicate that the generative power of dao precedes that of the heavenly and the earthly and the fact that it does ‘not endure’ is because that power of generation is in everything at every instant.

15. Pang Pu 龐樸 (1999) has remarked that in a cosmological sense, sheng is not to be understood in terms of ‘derivation’ (paisheng 派生) like how a chicken lays an egg but rather in terms of ‘transformation’ (huasheng 化生) where that which generates is transformed into that which is generated like a cloudy sky becoming a clear sky (p. 303). Mou Zongsan (2003b) also describes the Daoist notion of sheng as busheng zhi sheng 不生之生, that is, rather than purposefully generating things, it is by not interfering with their spontaneous arising that dao allows things to generate themselves (p. 106).

16. Mou (2015) directly states: ‘Thus, Daoism advocates for yangsheng. Yangsheng is yangxing; it is the cultivation done in terms of the heart-mind that has results in terms of xing’ (p. 317). Zheng (2016) also takes note of the importance of understanding yangsheng as yangxing: ‘The “Yangshengzhu” chapter contains thought on yangxing and this meaning is perhaps stronger than that of yangsheng’ (p. 179). We also find the term yangxing 養性 in the Huainanzi 淮南子 where in both the ‘Chuzhen 俶真’ and ‘Taizu 太族’ chapters it appears alongside yangsheng and seems to be interchangeable therewith.

17. See Tang Junyi’s seven cosmological postulates (2016, pp. 1–17). See also Wang (2012) and Bruya (2010, pp. 207–250).

18. This is also why the Mengzi 1A7 claims that ‘exemplary persons stay away from the kitchen’ (junzi yuan paochu 君子遠庖廚). If an exemplary person is going to be exemplary than that person must undertake the work suited thereto and that is not the work of a cook.

19. Graham points out three instances in the Zuozhuan 左傳 where xing is used in this sense and he translates it as ‘livelihood’ (1986, p. 11).

20. The Liezi has been historically suspected as being a forgery, but more and more scholars are beginning to accept it as an indispensable member of Daoist genealogy. It is my opinion that the great overlap of content between the Zhuangzi and the Liezi means that they can be used to interpret each other (R. Yang, 2016, p. 313).

21. Graham (1990) offers this translation: ‘which of them is appropriate is grasped without speech and achieved by nature’ (p. 104).

22. In this sense it resembles Laozi 17’s ‘The common people all say they are as they are of their own accord (baixing jie wei wo ziran 百姓皆謂我自然).