General characteristics

The idea of yin and yang

Yin and yang literally mean “dark side” and “sunny side” of a hill. They are mentioned for the first time in the Xice, or “Appended Explanations” ( c. 4th century bce), an appendix to the Yijing (Wade-Giles: I Ching;Book of Changes): “A succession of yin and yang is called the Tao.” Yin and yang are two complementary, interdependent phases alternating in space and time; they are emblems evoking the harmonious interplay of all pairs of opposites in the cosmos.

First conceived by musicians, astronomers, or diviners and then propagated by a school that came to be named after them, yin and yang became the common stock of all Chinese philosophy. The Taoist treatise Huainanzi (book of “Master Huainan”) describes how the one “Primordial Breath” (yuanqi) split into the light ethereal yang breath, which formed heaven; and the heavier, cruder yin breath, which formed earth. The diversifications and interactions of yin and yang produced the Ten Thousand Things.

The warm breath of yang accumulated to produce fire, the essence of which formed the sun. The cold breath of yin accumulated to produce water, the essence of which became the moon.

The idea of qi

Yin and yang are often referred to as two “breaths” (qi). Qi means air, breath, or vapor—originally the vapor arising from cooking cereals. It also came to mean a cosmic energy. The Primordial Breath is a name of the chaos (state of Unity) in which the original life force is not yet diversified into the phases that the concepts yin and yang describe.

All persons have a portion of this primordial life force allotted to them at birth, and their task is not to dissipate it through the activity of the senses but to strengthen, control, and increase it in order to live out the full span of their lives.

The idea of wuxing

Another important set of notions associated with the same school of yinyang are the “Five Phases” (wuxing) or “powers” (wude): water, fire, wood, metal, earth. They are also “breaths” (i.e., active energies), the idea of which enabled the philosophers to construct a coherent system of correspondences and participations linking all phenomena of the macrocosm and the microcosm. Associated with spatial directions, seasons of the year, colors, musical notes, animals, and other aspects of nature, they also correspond, in the human body, to the five inner organs. The Taoist techniques of longevity are grounded in these correspondences. The idea behind such techniques was that of nourishing the inner organs with the essences corresponding to their respective phases and during the season dominated by the latter.

Yang Zhu and the Liezi

Yang Zhu ( c. 400 bce) is representative of the early pre-Taoist recluses, “those who hid themselves” (yinshi), who, in the Analects of Confucius, ridiculed Confucius’s zeal to improve society. Yang Zhu held that each individual should value his own life above all else, despise wealth and power, and not agree to sacrifice even a single hair of his head to benefit the whole world. The scattered sayings of Yang Zhu in pre-Han texts are much less hedonistic than his doctrine as it is presented in the Liezi (book of “Master Lie”).

Liezi was a legendary Taoist master whom Zhuang Zhou described as being able to “ride the wind and go soaring around with cool and breezy skill.” In many old legends Liezi is the paragon of the spiritual traveler. The text named after him (of uncertain date) presents a philosophy that views natural changes as a pattern that can serve as a model for human activities.

Guanzi and Huainanzi

In the several Taoist chapters of the Guanzi (book of “Master Guan”), another text of uncertain date, emphasis is placed on “the art of the heart (mind)”; the heart governs the body as the chief governs the state. If the organs and senses submit to it, the heart can achieve a desirelessness and emptiness that make it a pure receptacle of the “heart inside the heart,” a new soul that is the indwelling Tao.

The Huainanzi is a compilation of essays written by different learned magicians (fangshi) at the court of their patron, the prince of Huainan. Although lacking in unity, it is a compendium of the knowledge of the time that had been neglected by the less speculative scholars of the new state Confucianism. The Huainanzi discusses the most elaborate cosmology up to that time, the position of human beings in the macrocosm, the proper ordering of society, and the ideal of personal sagehood.