¹ This summary is based on the following articles: ‘Psychology and self-cultivation in early Taoistic thought’, Harvard Journal of Asiatic Studies, 51/2, 1991, 599–650CrossRefGoogle Scholar; ‘Who compiled the Chuang Tzu?’ in Rosemont, Henry Jr. (ed.), Chinese texts and philosophical contexts: essays dedicated to Angus C. Graham (LaSalle, Ill.: Open Court, 1991)Google Scholar; ‘Redaction criticism and the early history of Taoism’, Early China, 19, 1994, 1–46CrossRefGoogle Scholar; and ‘The inner cultivation tradition of early Taoism’, in Lopez, Donald S. Jr. (ed.), Religion of China in practice (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1996), 123–148.Google Scholar

² See, for example, the important contrast made by the Syncretist author of Chuang-Tzu 33, that between those who follow the comprehensive Tao-shu (namely, ‘ us’) and those who follow partial and incomplete techniques (fang-shu ). I have elsewhere contended that this phrase testifies to the developing self-identity of the Syncretist Taoist school of the early Han and that it could also have served as the basis for Ssu-ma Tՙ an's identification of them as the Taochia .

³ Fumimasa, Fukui, ‘The history of Taoist studies in Japan and some related issues’, Ada Asiatica, 68, 1995, 12–13.Google Scholar

⁴ See, for example, Daniel Brown, ‘The stages of meditation in cross-cultural perspective’, and Chirban, John, ‘Developmental stages in Eastern Orthodox Christianity’, In Wilber, Ken, Engler, Jack and Brown, Daniel (ed.), Transformations of consciousness (Boston: Shambala, 1986), 219–284 and 285–314.Google Scholar

⁵ For an analysis of breath meditation in the Lao-Tzu see my ‘Laozi in the context of early Daoist mystical praxis’, in P. J. Ivanhoe and Mark Csikszentmihalyi (ed.), Essays on religious and philosophical aspects of the Laozi (forthcoming). It includes a brief discussion of the Chuang-Tzu's techniques of ‘fasting the mind’ and ‘sitting and forgetting’. These are found in Chuangtzu yin te. Harvard-Yenching Institute Sinological Index Series, no. 20 (Peking, 1947), 4/24–34 and 6/89–93.Google Scholar

⁶ Chuang-Tzu yin-te, 6/36.

⁷ Donald Harper first noticed this structure in the 12-sided jade knob. See Harper, , ‘The sexual arts of ancient China as described in a manuscript of the second century B.C.’, Harvard Journal of Asiatic Studies 47/2, 1987, 563.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

⁸ Mo-jo, Kuo, ‘Ku-tai wen-tzu chih pien-cheng de fa-chan’ K'ao-gu, 5, 1972, 9.Google Scholar

⁹ Needham, Joseph, Science and civilization in China, Vol. 2 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1956), 242Google Scholar. The inscription is translated and briefly discussed on p. 143.

¹⁰ Kuo Mo-jo, 9.

¹¹ For an excellent discussion on the use and significance of these terms in the po-shu see Peerenboom, R. P., Law and morality in ancient China: the silk manuscripts of Huang-Lao (Albany: State University of New York Press, 1993), 64–66.Google Scholar

¹² Yates, Robin D. S., ‘The Yin-Yang texts from Yinqueshan’, Early China, 19, 1994, 95–96 and 102CrossRefGoogle Scholar. Yates observes an important difference: whereas the Yin-Yang texts are extremely detailed in their rules humans must follow in order to harmonize with the greater patterns and cycles of Heaven and Earth, the ‘Huang-Lao po-shu’ are more abstract and generalized. They thus demonstrate the meaning of Ssu-ma T‘an’s statement about the Taoist lineage: they follow the general guidelines of the Yin-Yang lineage (Shih-chi (Peking: Chung-hua, 1959), 130.3289Google Scholar).

¹³ Roth, Harold D., ‘The Yellow Emperor's guru: a narrative analysis from Chuang Tzu 11’, Taoist Resources, 7/1, 1997.Google Scholar

¹⁴ Chuang Tzu yin-te, 6/6–7. My translation is adapted from Graham, A. C., Chuang Tzu: the Inner Chapters (London: George Allen and Unwin, 1981), 84.Google Scholar

¹⁵ Harper, art. cit, 550.

¹⁶ Roth, Harold D., ‘What is Huang-Lao?’,a paper given at the 50th Annual Meeting of the Association for Asian Studies,New Orleans, Lousiana,April, 1991Google Scholar; and Queen, S. A. and Roth, H. D., ‘Daoist syncretisms of the Late Zhou, Qin and Han’, in deBary, Wm. Theodore and Bloom, Irene (ed.), Sources of Chinese tradition (revised ed., New York: Columbia University Press, in press).Google Scholar

¹⁷ Ma-wang-tui Han-mu po-shu (Peking: Wen-wu Press), 1980, 53Google Scholar, lines 12–13. Characters in parentheses are alternate readings or conjectural emendations provided by the editors; those in brackets are my own conjectural emendations based on meaning.

¹⁸ I disagree completely with the conjectural restoration of these six missing graphs supplied by the editors (p. 54, n. 71): () from a sentence in the Shang-chūn shu: It introduces a completely new topic, that of ‘strength’, into the discourse and alters the meaning of the sorites that follows. My conjectural emendation continues the subject of preservation and loss of natural guidelines or patterns (li ) from the previous paragraph and provides a logical link with the sorites structure that follows. Please note that the use of italics is to emphasize the textual material most relevant to the present investigation.

¹⁹ See, for example, Feng-tՙai, Tՙien, Lü-shih chՙun-chՙiu tՙan-wei (Taipei: Student Book Company, 1986), 153.Google Scholar

²⁰ See, for example the following: Kung-chuan, Hsiao, A history of Chinese political thought, vol. 1, transl. Mote, F. W. (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1979), 556–570Google Scholar. Hsiao sees it as an expression of ‘pre-Chՙin egocentric thought’ derived from the Yangists; Graham, A. C., Disputers of the Tao (LaSalle, Illinois: Open Court, 1989), 373–374Google Scholar, maintains that it combines ‘the essential elements of Legalist statecraft… with Confucian and to a lesser extent Mohist moralism, all inside the frame of Yin-Yang cosmology …’, but concurs with Hsiao that its ‘organizing doctrine … is not Taoist but Yangist …’; Kuang, Wu, Huang-Lao che-hsüeh t'ung-lun (Hangchou: Chekiang Peoples' Press, 1985), 170–175Google Scholar, argues that the entire work should be classified as Huang-Lao.

²¹ Tՙien, , Lü-shih chՙun-chՙiu tՙan-wei, 341–355Google Scholar. This total omits the 13 essays that are part of the structural framework of the book and that were probably written by the editor(s). This includes the 12 ‘records’ (chi ) essays, each devoted to listing the proper ritual observances to be observed by the ruler for each of the 12 months of the calendar and which occur at the beginning of each of the first 12 chapters. They have their own structure. It also omits the postface (hsü-i ) to the first 12 chapters that is found at the end of the twelfth chapter.

²² Meyer, Andrew S., ‘The Huang-Lao chapters of the Lü-shih chՙun-chՙiu’,paper given at the 53rd Annual Meeting of the Association for Asian Studies,Boston,March, 1994Google Scholar. Where I would qualify his argument is that there is little evidence to suggest that ‘ Huang-Lao’ is a label these thinkers applied to themselves at this time or that this label even existed before the Han. However this does not change in any way the definite links between these chapters and the ideology of what later came to be thought of as Huang-Lao. Until this is clarified further I prefer simply to say that these chapters represent another form of Taoist syncretism with clear similarities to those other forms I have identified previously.

²³ A concordance to the Lüshi chunqiu, (ed.) Lau, D. C. and Ching, Chen Fong (Institute of Chinese Studies Ancient Chinese Texts Concordance Series, Philosophical Works, no. 12, Hong Kong: Commercial Press, 1994), 14–15.Google Scholar

²⁴ Restricting desires (chieh shih yü and relinquishing various types of biased thought (shih chih mo and chՙ ü chՙiao ku ) are characteristic technical terms of Syncretist Taoism. See my ‘Who compiled the Chuang Tzu?’, 96–7. They are also present in the two Chuang-Tzu passages on ‘mind-fasting’ and ‘sitting and forgetting’ cited above.

²⁵ Roth, Harold D., ‘The early Taoist concept of Shen: a ghost in the machine?’, in Smith, Kidder (ed.), Sagehood and systematizing thought in the Warring States and Early Han (Bowdoin University, 1989), 11–32.Google Scholar

²⁶ Roth, , ‘Psychology and self-cultivation in early Taoistic thought’, 613–620.Google Scholar

²⁷ For this understanding of shen, see my ‘The early Taoist concept of Shen’, 11–22 and ‘The inner cultivation tradition of early Taoism’, 123–48, especially pp. 126, 131, 136, 140.

²⁸ ibid., 162.

²⁹ Kuan-Tzu, Ssu-pu tsՙung-kՙan edition, 16/4a2.

³⁰ Harvard-Yenching Concordance [HYC], 64/23/66–70.

³¹ For a specific conceptual parallel see the Chuang-Tzu passage on the ‘fasting of the mind’, which contains the following phrase: (HYC, 9/4/28).

³² Roth, , ‘Who compiled the Chuang Tzut?’, 88–92, 95–9.Google Scholar

³³ Kuan-Tzu, 16/2b10: .

³⁴ Kuan-Tzu, 13/la10 (Statement) and 13/2b5 (Explanation).

³⁵ This emendation to delete and replace it with , the variant in the Chu Tung-kuang edition of 1579 is from Mo-jo, Kuo, Hsü Wei-yü , WenI-to , Kuan-Tzu chi-chiao (Peking: Chung-hua shu chü, 1955), 634.Google Scholar

³⁶ I emend the explanation to fit the sentence from the statement that it is paraphrasing.

³⁷ This emendation is from Mo-jo, Kuo et al. , Kuan-Tzu chi-chiao, 641Google Scholar.

³⁸ I have emended to because of the considerable semantic evidence for this from the other passages examined here and further, because of the possibility that the initial error was caused by a similar-form corruption of the original graph.

³⁹ Kuan-Tzu chi-chiao, 641.

⁴⁰ See, for example, the only discussion of meditative stages from the ‘Inner Chapters’ of Chuang-Tzu, where Pu Liang-i is said to directly perceive his own solitude (), a stage directly before he is able to ‘ be without past and present’ (). Chuang-Tzu yin-te, 6/41.

⁴¹ For an analysis of this aspect of ‘Hsin-shu, shang’, see my ‘Psychology and self-cultivation in early Taoistic thought’, 620–25.

⁴² A concordance to the Huainanzi, (ed.) Lau, D. C. and Ching, Chen Fong (Institute of Chinese Studies Ancient Chinese Texts Concordance Series, Hong Kong: Commercial Press, 1992), 7/55/20–24.Google Scholar

⁴³ Tՙung usually means to circulate or to flow through without obstruction. From this comes the associated meaning of to understand. My translation here, ‘to be absorbed’ is an attempt to take these meanings and apply them to an epistemology of breath meditation in which the awareness, i.e. the conscious focus of the adept, is the subject of this verb. When one is fully absorbed in inner meditation, there are no longer any mental obstructions to one's awareness. It is like our experience of being fully absorbed in reading a book or seeing a motion picture. In this experience, our awareness is totally absorbed in what it is experiencing and flows freely in the constantly changing objective field of the book or film. In this passage, because consciousness has been emptied through apophatic practice, the absorption is in an empty internal field, a pure numinous or spiritual consciousness in which the unitive power of the One is directly apprehended.

⁴⁴ I have omitted the jade knob inscription from the table because it is unique among these passages in apparently not discussing the phenomenology of meditative stages. This uniqueness, which undoubtedly comes from its antiquity, does not disqualify it from consideration along with the other passages; indeed, it is the prototype of the rhetorical structure exhibited by all of them. However, to include its instructions for guiding the breath in the table would be like comparing apples and oranges.

⁴⁵ For a discussion of these processes, see, for example, ‘Psychology and self-cultivation in early Taoistic thought’, 611–20. For the reference to this metaphor, see Kuan-Tzu 16/2b10.

⁴⁶ Chuang-Tzu yin-te, 6/92–93.

⁴⁷ Kuan-Tzu, 16/2a8, 2b8, 3bl, 4a6, and 16/4al, respectively.

⁴⁸ Roth, Harold D., ‘Some issues in the study of Chinese mysticism: a review essay’, China Review International, 2/1, 1995, 154–173CrossRefGoogle Scholar; and idem, ‘Laozi in the context of early Daoist meditative praxis’.

⁴⁹ See the summary tables in Brown, , ‘The stages of meditation in cross-cultural perspective,’ 272–284Google Scholar and Chirban, , ‘Developmental stages in Eastern Orthodox Christianity,’ 300–301.Google Scholar