Book as Object: A Copy of the Taishang Ganying Pian

 

This essay is not really a study of this popular Daoist text as much as an appreciation of the artifact of one copy of the book itself and a bit of a glance up a few of the innumerable paths it, like all other objets d’art, opens to view.  In the last paragraph I venture a few rhetorical firecrackers that might seem out of place in a soberer article. 

 

     My copy of the Daoist text titled Treatise of the Exalted One on Response and Retribution, the T’ai-Shang Kan-Ying P’ien, today transliterated as the Taishang Ganying Pian (太上感應篇), was printed in 1906 [1].  How such a book came to be published -- not only in America, but in LaSalle, Illinois, which might by some standards be regarded as the middle of nowhere – is, unsurprisingly, a story of a few nonconformists.  I grew up near Chicago and LaSalle to me was simply the town by Starved Rock State Park.  In college I had a housemate from LaSalle and I noted his pronunciation of his hometown – “Láy-sal” – with the stress on the first syllable (just as its sister city Peru was called by the natives “Peé-roo”).  [2]

     My book, in excellent condition apart from severe browning of its acidic pages, is a fruit of the business success of a German immigrant, Edward Carl Hegeler.  During the nineteenth century coal and zinc mines were developed in the LaSalle area, in part by this university-educated free-thinker.  Hegeler was a man of philosophic bent who appreciated spirituality yet could not accept orthodox religion.  Once he had become prosperous through his business activities, Hegeler sought to spread his notion of a new sublime vision based in science and uncorrupted by superstition.  In support of his opinions, he became active in the Free Religious Association, a group advocating a rational universal religion [3] and eventually assumed the editorship of the Association’s journal, formerly The Index, as the Open Court magazine, after he had founded the Open Court Publishing Company, which published books as well as another periodical, The Monist. 

     Under the editorship of Hegeler’s son-in-law Paul Carus the company became a significant source of information about Asian philosophy and religion in the West as well as publishing work by Charles Sanders Peirce.  Carus himself had a doctorate from Tübingen and a mind that, like that of the young Augustine, kept inquiring.  Once a Spinozist, he next decided that Buddhism most closely approached his own beliefs and wrote The Gospel of Buddha, modeled on the Christian gospel, in an effort to make Asian spirituality more approachable for Americans.  He eventually adapted Ernst Haeckel’s brand of hylozoism, called panpsychism, terming his own refinement panbiotism, which he described as a variety of monism that holds all nature “is fraught with life; it contains life; it has the ability to live” [4].

     In association with the World Columbian Exposition, the world’s fair in Chicago celebrating the quatercentenary of Columbus’ arrival in  the Western hemisphere,  a Parliament of the World’s Religions was held in 1893.  There Ramakrishna’s disciple, Swami Vivekananda, fascinated the audience with his universalist Hinduism (which was to form the basis for the Vedanta Society).  Among the other representatives of major traditions who appeared at the Parliament was  Soyen Shaku, the first Zen master to teach in the United States.  Carus met Shaku and asked if he would be willing to translate Asian texts for Open Court. Though Shaku declined, he suggested his student D. T. Suzuki, who was to become the most important exponent of Zen in America. 

     Among the projects Carus and Suzuki undertook was the T’ai-Shang Kan-Ying P’ien (as they called it is the old Wade-Giles transliteration).  They produced a curious volume neither wholly popular nor scholarly, spiritual in its final aspirations, but offering a number of rewards short of enlightenment.  The book is designed with care and taste.  The decorative cover, reproduced above, is only the first of its visual charms.  A frontispiece features a magisterial portrait of a grandly bearded Lao Dz looking utterly satisfied by Keichyu Yamada whom Carus then hired to illustrate Open Court’s edition of Scenes from  the Life of Buddha (1898).  Scattered throughout are  curious anonymous line illustrations from late editions of the book. 

     The annotated translation by D. T. Suzuki and Paul Carus follows the Chinese text each page of which is accompanied en face by a grid indicating the meaning of every individual character, in this way giving the reader without knowledge of Chinese some insight into the language while providing Sinologists with the original. 

     The book itself, as its English title Treatise of the Exalted One on Response and Retribution indicates, concerns karma, the cause and effect of people’s actions, with the intention of inculcating a simple morality based on retributive justice.  Job’s counsellors would have agreed with the author of this little book that every good deed unfailingly brings good fortune whereas every sinful or ignorant act brings an inevitable punishment.  Surely Lao Dz himself, like Job, would reject this mechanism as woefully reductive if not outright untrue.  Indeed, everyone can see in lived experience that it is every bit as common for the good to suffer while the wicked prosper.  Though in practical terms too inaccurate to be the governing principle of many people’s actions, the idea of immediate and perfect divine justice is so tempting  it has received wide currency.  This “myth” in the Platonic sense of a “royal lie,” a “needful falsehood” [6] is useful in shaping people’s behavior, influencing them toward selflessness, even if they know in a way that it is a fiction..

     Though attributed to Lao Dz himself (the “Tai-shang” or “grandly high one” of the title, the main text has been dated to  1164 C. E.  From the first, the book enjoyed state patronage and large editions were distributed as an act of virtue by the sponsors and to elicit good behavior from the masses.  In spite of its association with Lao Dz, the book shows little affinity with the Dàodé Jīng.  It is rather a product of the Chinese syncretic tradition that mingles elements of Buddhism, Daoism, and Confucianism with local folk belief, one product of which is the Lushan school of Daoism [7].  So great was the book’s appeal as a simple way of performing a moral act by distributing a book which encourages virtue among its readers that countless copies were manufactured and given out by religious laypeople and governmental agencies.  In their “Introduction” Carus and Suzuki suggest that perhaps no book has attracted greater devotion or has enjoyed more readers.

     The proliferation of this particular text in numerous editions over the years was enabled by the rise of inexpensive printing but was motivated in the first place by the treatise’s own promises.  Rather like the Gideons (who continue to distribute millions of Bibles annually), pious Daoists sought to accumulate merit by disseminating the Treatise which was classed as a “morality book” (shanshu 善書), a prescriptive guide to righteous behavior. The Open Court volume follows the model of numerous Chinese editions which append narrations of anecdotes that provide particulars of people’s well-deserved benefits and punishments in the present life with occasional recourse to heaven and hell.  The very first tells of a man who always revered the Treatise and, as a result, ascends with his family bodily into heaven, just as tradition says Enoch and Elijah did.  In the second story a poor but devout scholar pawns his clothes to support a printing of the Taishang Ganying Pian and shortly thereafter receives prestigious appointments from the emperor. 

     The main body of the text is a simple catalogue of ethical mandates, the great majority of which would be acceptable in most times and places.  The author illustrates such general rules as “do not proceed in an evil path” with specific positive advice such as advocating aid for the needy  while denouncing evildoers who lie and oppress others.  Some injunctions warn against improper ritual observance or violation of taboos (such as by needlessly killing a snake or a tortoise, by performing an execution on a holiday, or by exposing one’s nakedness at night).  The book thus constitutes a convenient epitome of moral teaching, a little law-book like the Albanian Kanun by which the individual might guide daily behavior.

     Anyone partial to the radical mysticism of Daoist or Advaita or Chan masters is likely to be taken a bit aback when, mingling with robed monks for the first time on a trip abroad, the traveler sees a pious supplicant genuflecting and reverently placing a package of Mallomars on the altar before a figure of the Buddha, while praying for a new baby, good grades, healing, or a promotion.  A certain suggestive potency does linger over such a scene.  It is, if nothing else, a spectacle of need, a touching glimpse into the abyss of human desire.  And the people, one guesses (or hopes) may be perhaps just a bit gentler than their more secular neighbors, for all organized religions teach ethics, laws, and moral rules their leaders say are ordained by higher powers. 

     Yet surely such petitioners have been as often disappointed in their hopes as often as they have been gratified.  Still they return the next time with the same belief in the efficacy of offerings.  Just as a  disappointed practitioner of juju will conclude that someone else must have had a stronger charm, these ordinary laypeople retain their faith in retributive justice in spite of seeing injustice daily. 

     Ethics are only meaningful within human communities, and Ultimate Reality can have little to do with such moral judgements.  Even far short of that last conceptual horizon (when all bets are off), moral concepts would vanish altogether should humankind become extinct.  On the other hand, in all societies religions have flourished, insisting on a patterns of behavior in part rational and functional and in part ritual and magical.  The Taishang Ganying Pian,  by attributing a systematic account of people’s moral obligations and expectations to a recognized sage, provided a guide to conduct that proved useful for centuries in China.   

     Practical it may be, but the book is warm with the glow of faith and scintillating with the peculiar Chinese fancy which seems never to take itself entirely seriously.  One reason a sinner cannot escape judgement, the reader learns, is that when he falls asleep on Kûng Shên Day his misdeeds will be reported to the Director of Destinies (siming 司命), a bureaucrat of the Jade Emperor Yù Huáng.  The informers are what Carus and Suzuki call “three body-spirits.”  In popular Daoism these are more precisely called the Three Corpses or Three Worms, hostile spirits dwelling within the human body, parasites that sometimes seek to bring disease, but always record their host’s moral failings.  From this belief arose the practice of staying up through the night of Kûng Shên in order that the hostile spirits would not then be able to fill out the proper reports in heaven.

     This sort of thing deems to us altogether fanciful.  Did the Chinese actually believe it, or did they merely welcome the opportunity to socialize through a long night?  Did Carus and Suzuki believe that they would bring enlightenment a bit closer with their republishing amid the flatlands of northern Illinois?  Or did they simply enjoy each other’s company and relish intellectual labor as an end in itself?  Did I believe my mind might catch sight of a bright spark from perusing this book? Or was I, too, only  passing the time, just as another might do with a popular novel or a situation comedy?  And you, dear reader, what brings you here?  There may in the end be little distinction between a search for truth and bliss and just getting through the day.  Both bring one at last after all to evening.  But I find that I am dreaming over this odd little volume, the most excellent characteristic of which is perhaps to stimulate dreaming.   

 

  

1.  My copy was printed in 1944 but purchased perhaps twenty years later.  Like the old Dover company and others in the days prior to the 1979 Supreme Court decision that made large inventories impractical, Open Court used to support their backlist forever.  Today Open Court offers a wide range of titles including a series on philosophy and popular culture that includes studies of the philosophical implications of Mr. Rogers, RuPaul, and the Simpsons.

2.  There seems to be a principle of this rural American displacement of accent to the first syllable.  Another Illinois town is Pekin, pronounced “Peé-kin” and named, like Pekin and Canton in Ohio, because its founders thought they were on the exact opposite side of the globe.  Until 1981 the Pekin school’s athletic teams were called the Pekin Chinks. 

3.  In particular on evolution.  Darwin was a regular donor and a subscriber to The Index. 

4.  Paul Carus, “Panpsychism and Panbiotism,” The Monist, Vol. 3, No. 2 (January, 1893).

5.  Among the titles used by other translators are Tai Shang's Treatise on Action and Response, the Treatise on the Response of the Tao, and the Treatise of the Most High on Action and Retribution.  The text was included in volume forty of the Sacred Books of the East series under the title Tractate of Actions and their Retributions in a translation by james Legge, the first Oxford professor of Chinese.

6.  Republic, Bk. III.

7.  In Chinese this is called the sanjiao yiguan (三教一貫) or sanjiao heyi ( 三教合一).  The Lushan sect continues today, including the use of shamans called  "masters of rites" or fashi (法師).