Ye Minghua and Jiang Lisheng
Zhu Quan was the seventeenth son of Zhu Yuanzhang, the founding Hongwu Emperor of the Ming. He was born in the eleventh year of the Hongwu era (1378) and died in the thirteenth year of the Zhengtong era (1448), at the age of 71. His life was the stuff of legend. Enfeoffed as a prince in his youth, he spent ten years in the saddle at war; in middle age he kept a low profile and immersed himself in scholarship; in old age he studied the Tao and set his heart on ascending to the heavens. “Nurturing life through the Tao, governing the heart through the Tao” was the most important view of health cultivation that Zhu Quan put forward. Because he was an imperial prince, this thought had a great influence on Taoist health cultivation.
Zhu Quan held that the Tao is the law of the great transformation of life in nature and all things, and also the knowledge and method by which people can break free from the bonds of life and death and seek oneness with heaven and earth. At the same time, the Tao is a form of self-management, a spiritual awareness and life faith through which one truly attains a harmonious, rounded heart and ease of both mind and body. This article offers only a brief discussion of his thought on nurturing life through the Tao.
1. The Tao Is a Natural Law
The Tao is a natural law; to make life last forever, one must act in accordance with the Tao. Zhu Quan carried on the Taoist view of life that “life and the Tao are one,” holding that humans come from the Tao and that the Tao is within the human body: used, it is preserved; unused, it perishes. In his view, humans and heaven are one thing; if heaven and earth can endure, why cannot humans endure between heaven and earth?
In his Jade Register of Grand Clarity on the Supreme Way of the Heavenly Sovereign (Tianhuang Zhidao Taiqing Yuce) he wrote: “The Tao is the ancestor of heaven, earth, and the myriad things. It gave birth to heaven, to earth, to humans, and to the myriad things. As for this Tao, those who attain it can transcend heaven and earth and exist alone, passing through ten thousand kalpas without decay.” But how can one hold to the Tao, live long, and escape the great limit of life and death? In his Lifeline (Jiuming Suo) he said: “I say there are not two Taos under heaven, and sages do not have two hearts; the principle is one. When heaven and earth give birth to things, there is not one thing that does not receive the two qi; so humans, too, are one thing between heaven and earth. Their bodies are the same as heaven and earth, and so they accord with the Tao; if they cultivate it, they can endure as long as heaven and earth. To have a way by which life can be extended and not cultivate it is to throw oneself away—is that not sad?”
The human body is the vessel that carries the Tao; life endures together with the Tao, and a human life is both an expression of the Tao and a return to it. There are not two Taos under heaven. One who cultivates the Tao can grasp its true meaning from the broad perspective of the cosmos and nature, and can also grasp its mysterious workings in society, human affairs, and even individual life—that is, by refining the yang spirit and cultivating the yin spirit, following the Tao as master, so that the Tao and life guard each other and life and the Tao protect each other. In short, if one can cultivate the Tao and unite with the True, one's body will be the same as heaven and earth; if one masters the laws of nature, one can endure between heaven and earth.
2. The Tao Is a Great Method for Governing the Heart
Zhu Quan held that the reason people are plagued by illness in this life is, in every case, that illness arises from the heart. Since illness arises from the heart, what should one use to govern the heart? Here Zhu Quan put forward his famous view of governing the heart and treating illness through the Tao.
In his Heart Methods for Saving Lives (Huoren Xinfa), Zhu Quan emphasized: To cure an illness, first cure the heart. One must set the heart right, and only then rely on the Tao. Let the sick person rid his heart entirely of doubts and worries, thoughts, all deluded ideas, all grievances, and all distinctions between self and others, and repent of the wrongs he has done throughout his life. Then he should let go of body and mind, uniting the heaven within him with the heaven he serves. In time the Tao will condense in his spirit, and naturally the ruler of the heart will be at peace and the ground of his nature calm. He will know that the myriad affairs of the world are all empty, that all his busy doings all day long are deluded thoughts, that his own body is illusory, that fortune and misfortune do not truly exist, and that life and death are but a dream. Awakening to this with a sigh, he will suddenly find release; the ground of his heart will naturally attain clarity and stillness, and his illness will naturally be healed. If one can do this, the illness is forgotten before the medicine reaches the mouth. This is the great method of the Perfected for governing the heart and treating illness through the Tao.
The key to governing the heart is to make its ground tranquil, at one with the great harmony, undisturbed by the confusion of the myriad things. In the Heart Methods for Saving Lives he went further: The heart is the dwelling of the spirit's clarity; its hollow center is no more than an inch across, yet spirit and clarity dwell there. The slipperiness of affairs and things is like tangled threads to be sorted, like wading through startling floods—now alarm, now punishment, now joy and anger, now brooding—and within a single day, within a single moment, that inch of ground blazes like fire. So if the spirit does not stay, it is eaten away; if clarity does not stay, it is worn out. Serenely one keeps counsel with the Tao without being aware of it. Some say: Be careful in doing good; once a craving sprouts, that is not good. If one pushes it back and does not accept it, one is contending with one's own conscience, and a resentful, indignant heart will surely rise to oppose one. When my proud and willful intention meets that resentful, indignant heart, how could they not fight? The fighting does not stop, and harm results. All the seven emotions and six desires that arise in the heart are like this. Hence it is said: a still heart can commune with the spirit's clarity.
The seven emotions and six desires arise in the heart; the nutritive and defensive qi fall into confusion and a hundred illnesses attack—all because of the heart. Therefore, to keep the heart and spirit tranquil, the heart must be like an ancient well whose water stirs no waves. “Water that is not stirred becomes clear in time, and its bottom can be seen”: that is, when the heart has no desires and is clear, empty, still, and at ease, one can rise above the burdens of things and human feelings.
The “Harmony Decoction” and the “Patience Prescription” that Zhu Quan put forward are concrete methods for governing the heart.
3. The Tao Is a Mental and Spiritual Activity
Regarding the Tao as a law of nature, and as a body of knowledge for managing the spirit and healing the ills of the heart, in effect creates, consciously or not, an orientation in how one understands the objective world: if the inner world holds on to something, it can balance itself and keep one's spirit and emotions always clear and tranquil. That something is spiritual awareness, and in Zhu Quan's view it is a form of the Tao. Of course, for Zhu Quan, coming to understand the Tao as spiritual awareness involved painful reflection on his life; that is, he formed his own view of life only after seeing through life's many traps.
We can see this clearly in the monologue in Master Chongmo Strolls Alone Through the Heaven of Great Canopy (Chongmozi Dubu Daluotian), in which Zhu Quan speaks through the character Huangfu Shou. It goes: I think that since heaven gave me life, there must be a way to extend it; why throw myself toward death? So this poor Taoist investigates creation before the image of the Lord was divided, and explores nature and life before father and mother were born; he goes beyond the purposeful world of worldly teachings into clarity, stillness, and non-action (wuwei); he does not keep company with the myriad dharmas, but transcends heaven and earth and endures forever, passing through ten thousand kalpas without decay. Seen this way, is it not best to cultivate perfection?
Clearly, after the Jingnan Campaign and his banishment to Nanchang, far from the capital, Zhu Quan had fully set his mind on embracing the Tao and cultivating simplicity; in fact he had found a way to protect himself wisely and escape danger. He not only hid himself physically but also explicitly put forward a philosophy of survival through spiritual reclusion, advocating living outside the purposeful world and entering a heart of clarity, stillness, and non-action. He truly understood the guiding role of the Tao's essential aim, and so began a conscious journey of self-salvation, cultivating perfection and uniting with the Tao.
4. The Tao Is a Faith for Life
Zhu Quan believed that the Tao can soothe the wounds of the soul and calm the discontent in one's breast, and that it is life's final refuge. So in the end, taking refuge wholly in Taoism, he was laid in his coffin in Taoist robes after death and held the Tao as his highest faith. The “Song of the Great Tao” and the “Song of Realizing the Tao” that he wrote in his Lifeline express entirely the convictions and aspirations with which he revered and practiced the Tao in his later years.
Song of Realizing the Tao
I now make this lifeline; those who fear death should study it with care.
This is the first vehicle for entering the gate of the Tao; there is also a kind of deathless medicine.
It is not in the mountains, nor in the rivers; right here in the Divine Land it should be compounded.
I teach you to refine yourself and lay the elixir's foundation; you must seek the bellows in Penghu, the isle of immortals.
If you meet it amid the workings of life and killing, the qi of prior heaven and later heaven can be seized.
If you can ingest qi and also subdue qi, all the accumulated yin will at once be melted away.
Above all guard the fire timing, the hardest pass; when the work is done in nine years, you must shed grain.
One body can transform into hundreds and thousands of bodies, each one proudly able to ride a crane.
Seas turn to mulberry fields and hills to valleys again and again; I sit and watch the vast expanse, telling the clear from the turbid.
When in years to come my body is refined into pure yang, only then will I dare show myself in the human world.
Then I know my life is not decided by heaven; how can creation and the Five Phases bind me?
If fate is not with you and things do not turn out so, still you must diligently guard the root and foundation.
One day the summons of the Purple Sovereign will come down, and I will ride the dragon carriage steadily up into the Great Vastness.
If you ask who made this song, the answer is: Quxian, the Emaciated Immortal, made it for you.
Zhu Quan took faith in the Tao as his starting point, studying, awakening to, embodying, and practicing the Tao as the process, and realizing the Tao as the goal of cultivating the Tao and uniting with the True. He believed in the Tao as the governing spirit of generation and transformation and took refuge in it with deep feeling, establishing the conviction that “my life is not decided by heaven; how can creation and the Five Phases bind me?” He sang for the Great Tao and lived to realize the Tao, finally becoming a Taoist in yellow cap who followed the transformations of nature.
In short, after the great upheavals of his political life, Zhu Quan withdrew in body and hid in spirit, growing ever quieter, guided above all by the spiritual direction of the Tao and religious feeling. At the same time, the Tao—as a law of nature and a great method for healing the heart—became in Zhu Quan a practice reflected in his cultivation, reaching the state of “using it daily without knowing it,” that is, the realm of what is so of itself.
(Ye Minghua and Jiang Lisheng, professors at Jiangxi University of Chinese Medicine)