Zhu Xi: Place, Phenomenon and Possession (a draft chapter from) Re-enchanting Confucianism: Mythistory and the Supernatural in the Making of a Tradition Lionel M. Jensen University of Notre Dame

By the time Zhu Xi 朱熹 (1130-1200), the son of a official posted to a district in Fujian, was born in

1130 the entire Jiangnan region had become a preferred place of refuge for those in perilous retreat

from the 1127 conquest of the northern territories of the Song dynasty by Jurchen tribes. Before that

human, political and symbolic tragedy, the Song population had already surged south with a shift in

economic fortune connected with an increasing commercialization of land that spread fungus-like

over the Jiangnan, issued from the infection of capital: loans, pawnbrokers, buying and selling of

landed property.1 Population increase and the commercial growth of the southern Yangzi region

continued through the twelfth century, bringing stress on both the rural and urban social order. The

anxiety was managed by the explosion of new gods and patrons, temples and shrines of a magnitude

not seen before even in Fujian where the atmosphere had always been thick with family worship

and temple cults—in other words, autochthonous practices.

In subsequent decades, war and displacement brought waves of refugees to this rugged,

resource-rich region. As Judith Boltz has explained, their forced relocation was as disturbing for

Song officials and learned men, as it was for the peasants of Fujian who became their hosts.2 A rich

but distressing complexity surged along the riverine passageways of this place. The elevated

biodiversity of the tropical forest sustained a cycle of living forms and inspired cultural values bred

of ethnic diversity, linguistic pluralism, and a religious landscape both varied and vertiginous. What

this perception of place meant for healer, merchant, official, peasant, priest, and scholar alike was

that they met social subversion of war and refugee migration with what always worked in coping

with the arbitrariness of a contingent universe and a person’s fixed fate: divination, summoning

spirits, and the cult of the dead.

Magical lore and sacred geography in sites such as Zhu Xi’s jingshe 精舍 “lodge of

wondrous remembrance”3 in the Wuyi Mountains, Wuyi shan 武夷山, were especially fecund with

the presence of immortals, palpable evidence of the ling靈 channeled along the conduit of academy

learning as it was swirled in the currents of the Nine Turns Brook, Jiuqu xi 九曲溪, and absorbed

into the folds of the fabric of Buddhist and Daoist investiture. For centuries, at least since the Han

Wudi’s 漢武帝 feng and shan sacrifices 封禪祀, (110 BCE) state and local society jostled for the

georeligious power of this landscape and its ample promise of immortality. Delphine Ziegler’s

studies of the cults of the Wuyi shan describe the magic of this particular dwelling place:

The Wuyi Mountains harbored a predominantly Taoist [sic] tradition…It reached its

apogee in the Song….The principal temple, the Chongyou Abbey 沖佑觀, was

erected in 748…at the base of Great King Peak, while an imperial edict guaranteed

the incorporation of the Wuyi Mountains within the “illustrious mountains and rivers

of the empire” network of sacred sites….After reestablishment of the central power

of the Song in Fujian in 978…Wuyi witnessed an intense period of enfeoffments of

local gods and bestowals of sacrificial statutes, which reveal at once the efficacy

manifested by the local Wuyi pantheon, and the efforts on the part of the central

government to control such religious effervescence so as to absorb the prevailing

local charisma into a coded form of state Taoism [sic]….An accumulation of legends

and lore that became attached to each particular site, metamorphosizing… into a

microcosmic Taoist [sic] paradise, where mortals could train and aspire to becoming

immortals. The Wuyi Mountains had become a hotbed of practices…teachings and

transmissions were exchanged between masters coming and going from surrounding

regions. Such masters practiced inner alchemy, performed Qingwei 清微 and

thunder rituals, prayed for rain, cultivated perfection and became immortals.4

Zhu Xi served as the temple superintendent of the Chongyou guan at the same time that he

had established the Wuyi jingshe, just four more turns up the Jiuqu, to which enroute he passed,

“the dry wood overhung on the cliff walls of rocky and inaccessible heights…boats lodged in the

crags: actually boat coffins inside which are dry bones and pottery; all still intact…”5 [See fig.] The

material remnants of ancient boat burial practices still lodged in the crags of the rock face were

made into “boats of the immortals” xianchuan 仙船 the plenitude of which confirmed the efficacy

of the rugged landscape. This was one of the places where, in the course of a dizzying array of

official obligations and personal devotions, Zhu Xi himself conducted a singular cult of paideia and

prayer, daoxue 道學, “the cosmic learning.”6

Like so many local cults in the Southern Song period, his daoxue ignited a passion for

inspired study and worship that spread beyond Fujian, extending by shrine creation and pilgrimage

over the contiguous regions of Jiangxi, Zhejiang, Hunan, Guangdong, and later Guangxi and

Sichuan. The pattern of development and elaboration of daoxue social organization—its early

special lodges, temple and residence reconstruction, shrine creation and shrine restoration in honor

of cult heroes—resembled that of so many popular sub-cult reactions against the official clerisy of

the Zhengyi 正一 and Quanzhen全真 Daoist lineages that were recognized by the Song imperium.

According to Hubert Seiwert:

These [lay devotional groups] were well-organized communities outside the structure

of ordinary society and the control of the sangha. Their members were no kin to each

other, but behaved like belonging to the same family. They had local leaders whose

position was not legitimate, and they maintained networks capable of mobilizing

large numbers of people. The structure of these networks was obscure to the officials,

for the gatherings seemed to occur suddenly and could not be anticipated. What

made these groups particularly alarming was that common people were attracted by

their activities, which implied that they might gain even more adherents. Hence they

represented an effective form of social organization escaping the control of the

authorities.7

What these cults shared above all was a consciousness of sacred landscape. Their social

organization a network of loci, specifically sites of concentrated spiritual presence, ling, from which

teachings were transmitted, reinforced in the body and mind of followers.

It is easy to understand, then, that Fujian was marked by frenetic activity, a great volume of

which was devoted to magic and religion.8 Zhu himself noted as much in a letter to his friend, Lu

Zuqian 呂祖謙 (1137-1181) reporting (with a measure of concern) that there were more than 100

different Buddhist and Daoist temples, not to mention associated cults and deities, which had been

established in just one prefecture where he was serving as a government functionary. From Zhu as

well as from his celebrated contemporary Hong Mai (洪邁, 1123-1222) one learns that there were

also seers whose efficacy was attested by villagers, who traveled along the footpaths from the

lowlands in the south to mountains in the north. Villages formed communities of worship, activity

specifically directed at efficacy for protection against enemies and for fecundity, for the healing of

sickness, and other very real and imagined maladies prominent consequences of which were the

disestablishment of official religious authority and the dissolution of the ranks of gender and class.

Indeed, in one of his few regional posts of meaningful rank, at Zhangzhou in 1180 Zhu complained

about nocturnal Buddhist prayer and chanting by integrated groups of men and women.9

At the same time, the Southern Song witnessed dramatic change in the organization and

control of the prominent official religions of Buddhism and Daoism as Seiwert’s study of popular

religious movements and heterodoxy makes clear:

…below the level of orthodox, state-supported Buddhism and Daoism there existed a

sectarian milieu that cannot simply be dismissed as unsophisticated or misunderstood

versions of Buddhism and Daoism…There were religious organizations independent

of clerical and political supervision. They had distinct beliefs and sometimes their

own scriptures, which were not accepted by the official religions…These popular

sects…stood in opposition to the clerical establishment.10

Vernacular religious urgings intensified in the political battles between official and unofficial

teachings, which in turn accelerated an expanding religio-genesis of therapeutic cults, local

thaumaturgies and magic.11 Formerly honored by recognition of imperial courts, these religions may

have lost stature in the convulsive southern reconstitution of the imperium, but they did not lose

popularity.

The official teachings were reinvented, grafted onto other emergent practices and rapidly

disseminated in multiple sub-cult forms particularly in the southeast. The Tianxin 天心 and Daomin

道民 cults were two of the more prominent of these.12 Local spirit medium cults, lay societies

attached to rural Daoist abbeys or Buddhist monasteries, therapeutic and exorcistic lineages, shrine

cults, thunder magic rites, and more emerged in the wake of the decline of centralized political and

religious control.13 These magico-religious legions spread through urban and rural life as a wide

vernacular web of inspiration and influence that ensnared the landscape of place and person,

creating new networks of social relations.14 Moreover, because Fujian’s history could “be traced in

the single and multi-surname settlements of Chinese immigrants since the Han dynasty, the cult to

gods and the cult to ancestors were often conflated.”15

These crisscrossing networks of Southern Song made up the everyday circuitry of a rural

official such as Zhu Xi, whose ministration to locals brought him into contact with the forces of

burial, market, and prayer moving along these networks’ ingathering of the temples where he served

as guardian.

Material Embodiment: Sacrifice and Philosophy at the Jingshe

When engaging with early thought, scholars often take texts as mere repositories of

ideas. This is to ignore that the physical manifestation of a text is actually the

mediator—and therefore a remnant—of early thought. The usual approach hence

fundamentally neglects the relation that may exist between ideas and the material

carrier that conveys these ideas to the present day.

Dirk Meyer

In his exiles from politics—both mandated and self-imposed—Zhu conducted instruction in his

changing understanding of his specially honored texts, Sizi 四⼦子 (“The Four Masters”: Lunyu,

Mengzi, Daxue and Zhongyong) setting the stage for a singular bequest that he called daotong 道統

“cosmic legacy.” He wrote letters, accepted payment for colophons and eulogies, divined, prayed,

sacrificed, and discoursed with his students in a special enclave of study, which in a number of

respects resembled a cloister, the daily choreography of which was organized around the figure of

Kongzi.

Divination for Zhu Xi, was intimately joined to ancestral invocation and actually meant “to

question ghosts and spirits via the milfoil and tortoise, which are objects of spiritual efficacy.”16 The

cult of the dead proved especially effective because the urgent claims of family life were always

more immediately joined to the rhythm of creation, as Zhu pointed out to some of his students: “All

things are rooted in heaven, all people in ancestors. Thus, all that is generated from ancestors

matches heaven.”17 The significance of Zhu’s observation was reinforced by the widely evidenced

vernacular practice of sacrificing to the dead at home, at the gravesite, at local temples.

Zhu’s responses about the working of prayer and sacrifice make explicit his presumption of

their efficacy in communicating with and even conjuring the dead. On this subject there is little

temporizing; we find no effort to explain away strange phenomena (to be distinguished from the

normal functioning of spiritual beings). These comments are clearly not philosophical

rationalizations of the ceaselessly alternating compression and rarefaction of qi 氣 nefesh.

Conversations, reconstructed or invented, are intended as an authentic record of exchange and thus

we take them as transcripts. Whether the dead can return, or if people may be possessed by demons,

or who is responsible for ancestral cult—these are issues of moment. They must be addressed but

not explained away. Zhu’s students want to make sure that they understand these forces in and of

themselves and also as an aspect of their teacher’s cosmological conception by inquiring of the

transit between the dead and the living in light of the dynamism of the “philosophical categories,” li

and qi:

然 人 死 雖 終 歸 於 散, 然 亦 未 便 散 盡, 故 祭 祀 有 感 格 之 理. 先 袓 世 次

遠 者, 氣 之 有 無 不 可 知, 然 奉 祭 杷 者 既 是 他 子 孫, 必 竟 只 是 一 氣, 所

以 有 感 通 之 理.

Although at death nefesh disperses, it may not entirely dissipate. This is why

sacrifices have a way of affecting [the dead] and getting them to descend. It is not

known if the nefesh of the primordial ancestors is still present, but because those

who make sacrificial offerings are the descendants composed of the same nefesh,

there is a reason that [the dead] will make contact.18

This antiphonal repertoire was performed in a favored place of private study where spirits,

ancestral, cosmic, natural, were all present. In certain respects the jingshe or “lodge of wondrous

remembrance” resembled a cloister with a ritually choreographed day of practices, prominent

among them cult paid to the figure of Kongzi 孔子, its patron. When many shidafu founded

academies (shuyuan,書院) or even charitable estates, Zhu established at least three different jingshe:

Hanquan jingshe 寒泉精舍 (1170), Wuyi jingshe 武夷精舍 (1183), and Zhulin jingshe ⽵竹林精舍

(1194). Each site was carefully selected; placement and construction determined by geomancy, but

more importantly by powerful private connections to ambient spirits and to the dead, in other words

the presence of ling, habitats of the sacred.19 The Hanquan jingshe, a site of prayer and sacrifice

built adjacent to his mother’s tomb was where the jiao 教 of daoxue was first heard; it was here that

the earliest of the conversations of the Zhuzi yulei were probably recorded (ca. 1170-1173).

The jingshe activities consisted of “daily rites of framing” in which students began the day

by washing and, when assembled, summoning Zhu Xi, the master of the lodge. They were then

joined by the master and all proceeded outdoors where one of the disciples burned incense and

offered oblation at the altar of the spirit of the earth god (tudi gong ⼟土地公). From this site the

students—always referred to as zidi ⼦子弟 (“sons and little brothers”) rather than dizi 弟⼦子

(“followers”)!—along with their teacher moved to a small pavilion on the jingshe grounds

containing an altar bearing the memorial tablet and image of the xiansheng 先聖, First Sage,

Kongzi.20 Here they bowed and offered a daily prayer of thanks, and then would proceed to the next

stage, that of the “rites of discipline”: study and self-cultivation under the guidance of Zhu Xi

conducted in the library of the main hall. They shared a morning congee and if they wished posed

questions to the master. The sacrificial offerings to Kongzi at the first of the month consisted of

wine and tea; while on the fifteenth seasonal vegetables and meat were presented and, at the close

of the ceremony, eaten by the worshippers.21

Most days included text reading dushu 讀書, the ongoing practice of which might permit the

student to acquire the yili 義理, the true meaning, of the texts of cultural forbears, most importantly

Kongzi. For aspiring scholars in Zhu Xi’s conclave this task was quite onerous, requiring as it did

wide knowledge of classics and commentaries, along with mastery of what Marcel Mauss in “Les

techniques du corps” termed habitus. Mauss used the term to refer to aspects of culture that are

registered in the body and observable in the daily practices of a person or a social group (a

conception that later proved critical to Marcel Granet). As such habitus represents the totality of

learned habits, skills, styles, tastes, and other non-discursive properties that operate beneath the

level of ideology and self-conscious elaboration.22

Reading specifically was an aural and oral practice; it was not done silently. And, in this

respect, it should be understood as performance, more akin to chanting an unmarked text. The

physical properties of reading aloud were salient in these exercises: sound and sense are once again

present in the action of hearing/learning. In some places Zhu also speaks of tasting the text in one’s

mouth in the course of mastering it, underlining the somatic, experiential aspects of the reading.

The aim of this pedagogy was to permit oneself to be given over to the rhythm and cadence

of the text so that it could be experienced, or in Zhu’s idiom, “heard,” wen 聞.23 The text was alive,

even in spite of the growth of printed versions. So the posture, reverent, upright was essential to the

performance and this in turn made it possible, Zhu believed, for a text’s “ideas seem to come from

one’s own mind.”24 Repeated recital, thus, increased the likelihood that one could find the meaning

of the ancients “in oneself,” while the original sage’s sentiments echoed through the study hall,

reverberating in the ears of listeners and merged with the sounds of their dwelling place.

Compressions and rarefactions of air—sound is the basis of speech and it is made audible in

contrast with the silence out of which it arises. The soundless written texts arranged on the shelves

of the jingshe library were brought alive by sounds made by the rush of breath from the bellows of

the lungs out through the throat. The texts, honored, sacred were respectfully restored to life with

every mastery of the mystery of reading: visible words made intelligible in declamation. In concert

with Zhu’s invariable insistence on text performance, I am drawing here on other traditions of word

animation in Hebrew and French. For example, the essential breath (qi or nefesh) of reading aloud is

akin to soul or spirit in an earlier French imagination as Charles Nodier reveals in stating: “The

different names for the soul, among nearly all peoples, are just so many breath variations, and

onomatopoeic expressions of breathing.”25 Such understanding is available to any of those aware of

the intimacy of voice and place, or as Gaston Bachelard portrayed it: the poetics of space.26 This is

simply another dimension of dwelling in the text.

The conflation of territorial and familial cults in particular in Fujian described by Davis and

Dean favored the distinctive reinvention of ancestral worship and patronage advanced by Zhu Xi on

the grounds of the jingshe. The rites and regulations of jingshe functioned as a performative

complex adopted, abducted perhaps, from vernacular practices for their power and efficacy. In other

words, the framework of daoxue, specifically as it was grounded in the autochthonous practice of

the lodge, was made of the surrounding therapeutic material of divination, local cults, and spirit

possession. It is possible, I believe, to consider the dissemination of these cults by way of expanding

shrine construction and pilgrimage as an attempt to invigorate opposition to the orthodoxy promoted

by the state. In contradistinction to the institutionally authorized academies and sacrifices of the

empire, Zhu’s jingshe constituted a charismatic, immediate alternative, as well as a counter to local

mantic practice under the aegis of fashi and similar practitioners. Meaningful social heteronomy of

numerous lay groups in and outside monasteries and temples at this time should be considered in

evaluating the dynamics of shrine establishment and local cults to worthies, especially those of

daoxue for it suggests the widespread understanding of the piety and devotion as a necessity of

social life.

Thus, while Zhu Xi’s retreat to local life seemed to be in synch with the local practices of

many elites of his era, the material facts of his jingshe teachings described above suggest that an

idiosyncratic culture of local shrine construction and dedication followed from this as well.27 Ellen

Neskar notes that this general practice began in the mid-twelfth century, but that Zhu devoted

himself increasingly to this creation of new, inspired patronage complexes via shrines to exemplary

figures citang 祠堂 (shrines to worthies) as well as to the anointed members of the daotong

(transmission shrines).28 In this way he was marking the rural landscape by a pilgrimage path of

shrine construction and shrine restoration that was in keeping with the broader twelfth-century

trends of cult diffusion while also countering other networks of ecstatic influence. With time this

pattern of private worship and pilgrimage became so widely practiced that it was nationalized, Zhu

Xi’s jingshe posthumously made into shuyuan (the Wuyi jingshe, for example, was renamed as

Ziyang shuyuan 紫陽書院), his specific prescriptions for the ritual life of jingshe were standardized,

and the mysterious cult to Kongzi rationalized, disenchanted, overcome.

The Interpretative Temper and Zhu’s Embedded Philosophy

Until very recently Zhu was exclusively represented as a traditionalist polymath obsessively

devoted to ritual punctiliousness and the exceptional moral superiority of elite devotion to a singular

interpretation of ru 儒 teaching. He was portrayed as a febrile opponent of Daoism and Buddhism

as well as a skeptic of common cults, myths, and a great many popular practices. Moreover, Zhu’s

sober skepticism and authoritative scholarly persona enwrapped the official—legal and

ideological—designation by subsequent imperial governments of the exclusive status of his

interpretations of all works whose mastery was required of office seekers. The stars of Zhu Xi’s

thought, a learned aristocracy, and the authoritarian state were thus in alignment within the

constellation of daoxue. Nevertheless, such interpretative convention makes it difficult to account

for a common refrain of the music of Zhu’s experience:

袓 考 之 精 神 魂 魄 雖 已 散, ⽽而 ⼦子 孫 之 精 神 魂 魄 自 有 些 小 相 屬, 故 祭 杷

之 禮 盡 其 誠 敬, 便 可 以 致 得 袓 考 之 魂 魄. 這 箇 自 是 難 說. 看 既 散 後,

⼀一 似 都 無 了, 能 盡 其 誠 敬, 便 有 感 格, 亦 緣 是 理 常 只 在 這 裡 也.

The ancestor’s spirit, the cloud and white souls, has already dispersed, and yet the

descendants’ spirit, the cloud and white souls, still has some wisps of relation. If in

the rituals of sacrifice the descendants fully exercise sincerity and reverence, they

can make contact with the ethereal and terrestrial souls of the ancestors. This is

difficult to talk about. Looking for them once they have dispersed it seems as though

[they] do not exist. [But] if you are able to exercise sincerity and reverence to the

utmost, then there will be contact, and trace this pattern [which] always only resides

in this place.29

蓋⼦子孫既是祖宗相傳⼀一氣下來, 氣類固已感格. ⽽而其語⾔言飲, 食若其祖考之在焉,

則有以慰其孝⼦子順孫之思, ⽽而非恍惚無形想象不及之可比矣. 古⼈人用⼫尸之意, 所

以深遠⽽而盡誠, 蓋為是耳.

Descendants inherit the same nefesh from their ancestors. When this nefesh is

responsive, all their [the descendants’] conversation, eating, and drinking will be as

if their ancestors are present. This will console the grief of their filial sons and

grandsons, not leaving things abstract and beyond their imagination. The idea of the

ancients using personators, shi ⼫尸(corpse; family medium), of the dead conveys deep

meaning and utmost sincerity.30

Zhu’s answers convey the intimacy of his understanding of spirit summoning and possession, one

that was as familiar to his students as it was to those over whom he officiated. This was not mere

ethnography; his observations were in sympathy with his own practice and conveyed in his most

significant legitimative conception of the truth of his teaching: daotong 道統, the cosmic legacy.

The metaphor of genealogy was made from a language of immediacy in order to reconstruct the

bloodlines of intellectual affinity in what Zhu termed the daotong, the legacy of the way. The terms

daotong and daoxue (learning of the way) have brought him equally voluminous amounts of

encomium and opprobrium from Chinese literati and from scholars of Chinese thought. In fact,

although Zhu’s conception of the authoritative handing down of Kongzi’s teachings may have been

appropriated from Buddhism (the affinitive transmission of mind [chuanxin 傳⼼心] from patriarch to

disciple in Chan),31 his definitive statements concerning the transmission of the way were actually

construed through the language and natural ecology of the ancestral cult.

By acting to “familialize” the legacy of the dao, Zhu tried to overcome the texts themselves,

thus allegorizing a living link with the dead heroes of antiquity, something further reinforced by his

founding of the Zhulin jingshe or Cangzhou Lodge of Wondrous Remembrance (Cangzhou jingshe

滄州精舍) very near the site of his mother’s tomb.32 The toponym zhulin given by Zhu to this

special place is replaced here by cangzhou, a term never used by Zhu and therefore one that reflects

a posthumous association outside the ground of creator’s dwelling. Indeed it is strange to find this

text under a title familiar only to latter-day daoxue followers: a sign of detachment from the magical

setting Zhu so loved.

Zhu Xi had gone to considerable trouble to arrange for the translation of his mother’s

remains to this locale and to make certain that the geomantic vectors of the site were propitious. It

seems as well that Zhu believed in the power of the soil at the gravesite, recognizing it, as we have

already seen was common in the late Warring Kingdoms and the Han, as a locus of the magical,

even holy.33 Zhu’s beliefs in this respect were out of keeping with those of his cohort and also broke

with the ritual conventions put forward in the Liji, a work that he knew especially well. Notable as

the distance between these beliefs is, there is no reason to conclude that Zhu was an outlier. Rather,

his reliance on geomancy and his presumption of the sacrality of the family tomb were shared with

most of his Fujian villagers. It was this complex of fertile spiritual circulation in and above the

ground that gave him confidence in his ability to call out to Kongzi and obtain a response.

In this context, some may consider Zhu’s pronouncement of daotong as a strategic response

to the dramatic insinuation of Buddhism into traditional rites, a response that brilliantly forged an

association between his fledgling fraternity of daoxue and that mythology of the sandai so

prominently a part of received wisdom. This makes some sense but I suspect that it was more likely

a creative counter to the local networks of patronage organized around ecstatic rites of summoning

for release of family dead from the maleficent grasp of demons of the underworld.34 It may have

been the troubling conjunction of metropolitan intrigue and the popularity of heterodox doctrines

that inspired Zhu to mark the founding of the Cangzhou jingshe on the thirteenth day of the lunar

month in 1194 with a sacrifice to Kongzi in which he offered the daotong as a gift to the ancestral

sage. But, the principal problem, as I see it, was not court politics and sectarianism. Rather, it was

the forgetfulness explicit in the obvious rupture of a transmission that Zhu presumed had once been

continuous and which he knew he was piously inventing anew. In a brilliant stroke of interpretation,

Zhu made the absence of the millennial absence of the dao a condition for asserting its genuine

presence in a moment of filial recovery dramatically portrayed in the cosmic vision of Zhou

Dunyi’s (周敦頤, 1017-1073) taiji tu 太極圖.

Zhou Dunyi, Taijitu, 1077

Stating his intention to retire from active service, Zhu summons Kongzi through sacrifice35

and reports (告 gao) his discovery of daotong (the cosmic legacy):

Text of the Cangzhou Lodge of Wondrous Remembrance Report to the First Sage

滄州精舍告先聖⽂文

後 學朱 熹, 敢 昭 告 於 先 聖 ⾄至 聖⽂文 宣 王, 恭 惟 道 統, 逺自羲軒! 集 厥 ⼤大 成,

允 屬 元 聖, 述 古 垂 訓, 萬 世 作 程. 三 千其 徒, 化若 時 雨. 維 顔, 曽 ⽒氏 傳 得

其 宗 逮 思 及 輿, 益 以 光⼤大. 自 時 厥後 ⼝口 耳 失 真, 千 有 餘 年 乃 曰 有 繼. 周,

程 授 受,萬 理 ⼀一 原 . 曰邵, 曰 張, 爰 及 司 馬, 學 雖 殊 轍, 道 則 同 歸, 俾. 我

後 ⼈人, 如 夜 復旦. 熹 以 凡 陋, 少 蒙 義 ⽅方, 中 靡 常 師, 晚 逢有 道. 載 鑚載仰,

雖未 有 聞, 賴 天 之 靈, 幸 無 失 墜, 逮 兹 退老 同 好, 鼎 來 落 此, ⼀一丘 羣. 居伊,

始 探 原, 推 本 敢 昧 厥. 初奠 以告廈尚 其 昭, 格 陟降 庭 ⽌止, 惠 我 光 明. 傳 之

⽅方 來, 永永 無 斁. 今 以 吉日, 謹 率 諸 ⽣生 恭 修 釋 菜 之 禮 以 先 師,兖國 公 顔

⽒氏, 郕 侯 曾 ⽒氏, 沂 ⽔水 侯孔 ⽒氏, 鄒 國 公 孟 ⽒氏, 配 濓 溪周 先 ⽣生, 明 道 程 先 ⽣生,

伊 川 程 先⽣生, 康 節 邵 先 ⽣生, 横 渠 張 先 ⽣生, 温 國 司 馬 ⽂文 正 公, 延 平 李 先

⽣生. 從 祀 尚 饗!

Latter day student, Zhu Xi, I dare to entreat the Former and Ultimate Sage, Monarch

of the Promotion of Culture, let us celebrate the dao legacy, [extending] far back to

Fu Xi and Huang Di! Its achievements were all assembled by the ancestral Sage

[Kongzi], who transmitted the ancient [teachings] and gave instructions, setting the

standards for 10,000 generations. His 3,000 disciples were transformed as if [his

instructions] had been a timely rain. Only Yan Hui and Zeng Zi were able to obtain

their lineage (qizong 其宗). It was not until Zisi and Yu that this legacy was made

more lustrous and great. Since then, subsequent followers lost the true transmission

in the process of teaching and receiving. The legacy remained in abeyance for more

than 1,000 years. What Zhou [Dunyi] and the Cheng Brothers learned and taught

was that the myriad patterns (wanli 萬理) have a single origin (yiyuan ⼀一原). As for

Shao [Yong], Zhang Zai, Sima [Guang], while their studies bore through disparate

paths they all arrived at the same conclusions about the way (dao 道). They guided

us later generations, as if we were moving from a dark night to the dawning of a new

day. When I was a child, I received instruction because of my deficiencies [while] in

my youth I received instruction from average teachers. [But] in my later years I met

those who had the dao. Sometimes boring down and at others looking above in

reverential pose, and even though there is but silence, I believe that it is because of

the sky’s miraculous efficacy (tianzhiling 天之靈) that we are fortunate that nothing

[of this legacy] was lost. Now, I am old and retired and those of similar appreciations

have gathered here with me to build this lodge. When we first established residence,

[I] explored the headwaters and sought the roots of [the lineage] because I did not

dare obscure it. Commencing to offer libation in order to report to you [Kongzi] on

this [lodge] and prize its illustrious summoning of the ascending and descending

spirits to this place [I hope they] will bless [us] generously with illumination.

Faithfully and indefatigably [we] will transmit [this legacy], without interruption, to

those following in the future. As it is an auspicious day, I will lead the assembled

students in celebration, performing the rite of offering food (shicai 釋菜) [to the

spirits of the sages and teachers]: the First Teacher, Duke of Yan, the family of Yan

[Hui] Lord of Cheng, the family of Zeng [zi], Lord of Jiangshui, Kong clan, Duke of

Zou Kingdom, and the family of Meng [Ke] accompanied by Mr. Lianxi Zhou,

Messers Mingdao Cheng, and Yichuan Cheng, Mr. Kangjie Shao, Mr. Hengqu

Zhang, Wen Kingdom Sima Wen [and] Mr. Yanping Li. Please receive these food

offerings!36

The interested quality of this genealogy is explicit but the text is not framed as shixi 世系, but as a

report to ancestors, specifically, Kongzi. What is being offered here to the sage, that is in addition to

the vegetable dishes and rice and incense, is the sacrifice of words: first offered orally as tribute or

encomium, then made flesh in the inscription. Furthermore, this sacrificial gift comprised the body

of the last version of Zhu’s Preface to the Zhongyong on which he worked so conscientiously.

A lineage of legitimate transmission is advanced here; however it is in the context of a

conversation with the spirit of Kongzi, who has “descended to this site” and whose presence is

recorded in the transcript of the report. More intriguing in this respect of spiritual migration is the

ascending and descending spirits, which refer here to all those marked by name in the final lines of

the report. The text of this prayer amounts to a celebration of the assemblage of daoxue immortals

so named at this inaugurated site of worship. This distinction is critical to an appreciation of the

uniqueness of the claim made in this report. Of course, the spirit of Kongzi was aware of the early

history of the dao that Zhu retells in his opening words. He is Kongzi after all! But, Zhu is casting

this wide net of magical transmission to include all those also distinguished by local transmission

sites along an expanding network of pilgrimage.

The opening salutation of the report begins with the grandest of Kongzi’s official titles,

Xiansheng zhi sheng wenxuan wang 先 聖 ⾄至 聖⽂文 宣 王.37 This is a gesture to the approved

nomenclature of the imperial sacrifices and was extended to Mengzi and every other ru figure who

had obtained official sanction. In this way Zhu avoided complications wrought by a more private

terminology, even though the outline of this transmission is explicitly contrary to what was viewed

in Lin’an as orthodox. In using it Zhu was taking what had been officially conferred on the sage by

the government,38 but he construed that relationship as explicitly private and intimate, being

conducted through prayer and intercession of the sort that was a distinctive new trend of the

educated elites of the Southern Song. The location of this prayer and sacrifice, within reach of the

site of his mother’s tomb, reinforces the lineal connections Zhu channels here.39

This is a report to the spirits of the dead, just as was the original telling ritual (gao) of the

Shang, in which the ruling king would report to the dead kings of his agnatic line in the context of

the pyromancy and sacrifice essential to efficacious intercession with the dead. [ex.: Crack making

on __ day Jue divined: ancestor ___ Shang example er gao a second report or verification]. Even

today in the cult of the dead, the eldest member of the clan reports bao 報 to the ancestors on the

bounty of the descendants. In this particular instance one wonders how Zhu’s assumed agnation was

made. He was not a descendant and so he was not made of the same qi as was Zisi. How was it that

Kongzi became an ancestor and how was it that Zhu qualified to offer cult in honor of the ancestral

sage?

The answer to the first question is found in the previous chapter where we learned that

Kongzi died intestate, lamenting this very state in the biographic section of the Shiji. Without

lineage to conduct cult, Kongzi was unanchored to the honor of sacrifice and remembrance and in

effect became a wandering spirit. As such, his numinous presence (ling) could be summoned by the

reverent intercession of later invokers, even those at a considerable distance. The matter of Zhu’s

claim of lineage descent from Kongzi may be more complex than the successor tales already

encountered, but it is critical to understand that it was seriously asserted in a manner distinct from

the mere transmission of a teaching or, a daoxue reproduction of the chuandeng lü 傳燈 prose

narratives of the Chan. His gift to his most cherished ancestor was the continuation of his legacy by

an army of the initiated spread to temples and sites from the southeast to the west to the eastern

coast of the empire. A number of comments collected in the Zhuzi yulei point to Zhu’s thinking on

this matter of fictive as opposed to actual ancestry, the following being particularly illustrative:

鬼 神 只 是 氣 。 屈 伸 往 來 者 氣 也. 天 地 間 無 非。 ⼈人 之 氣 與 天 地 之 氣

常 相 接, 無 間 斷, ⼈人 自 不 見. ⼈人 ⼼心 才 動, 必 達 於 氣, 便 與 這 屈 伸 往 來 者

相 感 通. 如 ⼘卜 筮 之 類…

Demons and spirits (gui shen) are just vital vapor (qi). [That which] stretches out to

join what goes and comes is vital vapor. It is everywhere between heaven and earth.

A person’s vital vapor and that of heaven and earth is constantly and uninterruptedly

connected [although] people themselves don’t see it. As soon as a person’s heart

moves, it necessarily reaches vital vapor, immediately conjoins with this one (qi),

which stretches out and cooperates with what goes and comes. It resembles a kind of

divination…40

The divinatory resemblance offered the prospect of invocation of spirits.

Problems of “Religion” in Representation

In this respect we may characterize Zhu’s behavior as “religious” rather than philosophical but it

was quite common to the everyday among the inspired forces circulating in the ambient space of

Fujian. Zhu is not talking here about study or any of the litany of scholarly concerns with which he

was also occupied. Instead, this report, like virtually all those recorded in the Zhuzi wenji, is a

reassurance to his ancestor and master that conveys his trepidation about the near abandonment of

the lines of family symmetry that bound him and his followers to the lineage of Kongzi. The

dynamic is familiar to us as that of the placative offering to ancestors as well as the gan/ying 感應

reciprocity of cosmology while the script of the shicai 釋菜 sacrifice is drawn directly from the

Liji.41 The musicality of this exchange reminds us of the necessity of reading beyond the text and

listening for the voices of resonance as stated here in the Yijing:

Things with the same tonality mutually resonate; things with the same vital vapor

seek one another. Water flows where it is wet; fire moves toward where it is dry.

Clouds follow the dragon; wind follows the tiger. The sage bestirs himself and all

creatures look to him. What is rooted in heaven draws close to what is above; what is

rooted in earth draws close to what is below. Thus everything follows its own kind.42

For Zhu Xi, the endurance of the message of these reports is important but the words are not

enough of a hedge against forgetting, for so many in his own day remained, in his estimation,

ignorant of the dao. Peculiar as it may seem, Zhu was enabled by the presumption of the classic

affirmation of resonance, and thus reassured Kongzi that he had discovered the lost thread of the

Master’s teaching. So, in one deft gesture, metaphysics gave way to cult, specifically the cult of the

dead. Now Zhu was prepared to rededicate himself to the cosmic legacy’s episodic transmission,

but in taking it up as he did, he commemorated his daotong against a backdrop of forgetting, and

even more cleverly, against possible claimants from other traditions.

He was made pure by what Kongzi had asked of him and, through sacrifice, Zhu pledged his

fellow ru like Sima Guang (1019-1086) to a broad culturally-purifying enterprise. These were

concerns that animated Zhu, and that, I would wager, put flesh on the skeleton of his li/qi psychic

cosmology; they may also provide one reason he grew increasingly intolerant of other contemporary

traditions. Having invented a cult of supreme privilege, Zhu charged himself and his disciples with

the preservation of cultural heritage against the rising tide of popular devotion to the yiduan or

heterodoxy of popular Buddhist and Daoist cults. Sectarianism was the inevitable consequence of

such a charge and once Zhu and the epigones of his daoxue teaching were officially installed in the

imperial Kongmiao (as they were at various times beginning in 1241 through to 1911), the closely

drawn circle of ancestors and worthies, real and imagined, would provide an effective mechanism

for persecution.

The examples offered above—and there are many, many more—make clear that as a

philosopher and as a historical figure, Zhu’s thinking is embedded in a particular place and time.

The frame of reference is locally specific and at the same time is linked to a larger regional complex

of meaning understandable to any of Zhu’s contemporaries. One is reminded in these instances of

the bodily, gestural fact of language and its immediate presence in the physical world of sight, smell,

sound even texture.43 In light of the far greater volume of Zhu’s classical commentary, philosophy,

and literature with which we are so familiar, passages of this nature are salient because strange.

encourages us to take stock of the very different understanding of mind, consciousness, and

knowledge that Song figures took for granted and that we have not been able to appreciate.

Embodiment of mind and thought is one way of getting at this difference and it is visible in another

passage from Zhu’s comments on geomancy and proper burial:

If the body is complete, its spiritual intelligence will be peaceful, and all descendants

will flourish, and sacrifices will not be discontinued. This is the principle of

spontaneity…Should the choice [of a gravesite] be defective rendering the place

inauspicious, then it is certain that there will be water, ants, and ground wind that

will damage the contents and thus cause body and spirit to be uncomfortable.

Descendants will also worry about death and the extinction of the lineage, both of

which are frightening.44

祈雨之類, 亦是以誠感其氣. 如祈神佛之類, 亦是其所居⼭山川之氣可感. 今之神佛

所居, 皆是⼭山川之勝⽽而靈者. 雨亦近⼭山者易⾄至, 以多陰也.

Like praying for rain, one arouses them [rain spirits] with one’s integrity. Similarly,

in praying to spirits and buddhas, it is also the case that the qi of the mountains and

rivers where they reside may be aroused. Today’s places where spirits and buddhas

reside are each the magisterial and numinous [lodgings] of the rivers and mountains.

For the places where rain also enters the mountains, change is extreme and there is

excessive yin.45

The passage reflects a confident grasp of cause and effect and while one might regard it as quaint in

its superstition it is best to recognize it as pertaining to a different kind of understanding. Language

of this kind is not merely poetic, but fundamentally unlike our own. We are reminded in these

instances of the bodily, gestural fact of language and its immediate presence in the physical world

of sight, smell, sound, even texture.46 In light of the far greater volume of Zhu’s classical

commentary, philosophy, and literature with which we are so familiar, passages of this nature are

salient because strange. Yet, similar language is found throughout Zhu Xi’s corpus especially in the

vernacular reconstructions of the Zhuzi yulei, where juan 3 on gui and shen is one of the longer

sections in the entire collection. For that matter because a sympathetic conception of cosmic

interplay gan/ying is foundational to Zhu’s worldview, the numinous appears and reappears

throughout the conversational record.

In this instance we can recognize the familiar marks of Zhu’s “rational dualism” in his

explanation of the universe’s latent moral complex (li). Yet, at the same time the passage discloses a

connectedness with the real, sensuous world that we can only approximate by identifying it as a

“religious” rather than philosophical sense. In other instances of his commentary on natural

phenomena we might employ the terms “superstition” or “primitive understanding” to account for

Zhu’s sensuous embeddedness:

論 及 請 紫 姑 神 吟 詩 之 事 曰: 亦 有 請 得 正 身 出 見, 其 家 小 ⼥女 ⼦子 見, 不

知 此 是 何 物. 且 如 衢 州 有 ⼀一 箇 ⼈人 事 ⼀一 箇 神, 只 錄 所 問 事 目 於 紙, ⽽而

封 之 祠 前. 少 間 開 封, ⽽而 紙 中 自 有 答 語. 這 箇 不 知 是 如 何.

[His students] were discussing the affair in which the Purple Maiden spirit had been

invited to recite some verse and [Zhu Xi] said: “When they invited her to assume

form, a little girl from the household appeared—we don’t know what this is. Just as

in Quzhou there was a man worshipping a certain spirit who simply recorded a list of

inquiries on paper and sealed it in an envelope in front of the spirit’s temple. After a

little time passed, he opened up the sealed list and on the paper he found the answers

to his inquiries...”47

The context in the first instance is a household automatic-writing session in which the Purple

Maiden (Zigu 紫姑) is summoned to assume bodily form (zhengshen chujian 正身出見). In

response, the deity’s spirit appears as a girl from the household who speaks for Zigu. In a sentence

this is spirit possession, and the standard call and response dynamic joining the visible and invisible

worlds, although it is not clear from this account if the young girl then aided in the movement of

planchette in the inscription of an oracular message or only spoke for the spirit. The second event,

like the first, is hearsay concerning another instance of spirit writing.

The Purple Maiden itself deserves further comment in this instance owing to its popularity

among examination candidates and its association with writing, as well as its beginnings as a

symbol of vulnerability and female protection. This spirit, Zigu, at least since the seventh century

CE has been associated with a larger pantheon of Ceshen (廁神) latrine spirits. It appears to have

derived from a legend first recorded in Sui era (sixth century CE) was associated with a toilet

bowing to her. The Purple Maiden was at first an oracle sought in invoking the dead guardian spirit

of the oracle was Zigu. There are a number of tales from which this mythical chain is forged, all

thematically joined to legends of a jealous wife who kills her husband’s mistress while she is in the

latrine. It developed into a cult among women, one that involved worship on the fifteenth day of

the first lunar month. In one manifestation of this cult miniature effigies of Zigu were made and

placed in the vicinity of the toilet or the pigsty. Before these honorific images invocations were

made and were acknowledged by the pleasurable movement of the effigy. Hong Mai provides

several accounts of divinatory invocation.48 It was common for the spirit to be invoked in the home

by way of objects into which she could descend and then animate; but there were instances as well

of spirit possession in which a young girl assumed the spirit of Zigu.

Considered by Wolfram Eberhard to have originated among ancient Thai practices, the

Purple Maiden was a common focus of mantic attention in the Southern Song, and her associations

with women widened to include writing, especially literary creation. Appeals to her are widely

documented in stories and biji 筆記. Planchette writing became very common in this era reaching

far beyond its local cult status to become an obsession among examination candidates who wished

to increase the likelihood of their success. Indeed, although Zigu was a maiden summoned by the

illiterate, Song era shidafu became actively engaged in this cult of spirit writing. In this instance,

Zhu’s exchange with his students conveys the seriousness of an effort to get at an explanation for

the occult phenomenon of spirit writing, while also conveying familiarity with the topic of

questioning. It also demonstrates the common tendency to enhance the probability of good fortune

by application of multiple methods of efficacy.

Invocation of Deities: Prayer and Sacrifice

The seriousness with which Zhu approached these matters is evident in the inclusion within his

complete literary collection of prayers and invocations accompanying sacrifice. One finds here

prayers for rain (offered in a situation of considerable duress when the unrelenting heat of a Chinese

summer left many without food), self-admonishment and confession and a number of intercessions

in which Zhu summons the dead, usually revered ancient figures, like Kongzi and Mengzi.

For me, one consequence of this attentiveness to local culture was the discovery of the

beginnings in sacrifice of one of the most celebrated and cited texts of the Neo-Confucian charter:

Zhu Xi’s preface to his commentary on the Doctrine of the Mean (Zhongyong zhangju xu 中庸章句

序) of 1198. In this final version of the Preface he makes a bold claim for the legitimacy of his

understanding, one conceived and written in the language of prayer, sacrifice, and reports to Kongzi.

Drawing directly on the language of his sacrifice at Zhulin, Zhu seeks to account for the manner in

which he has come into possession of a precious, textual cum familial grasp of the dao:

中庸何為⽽而作也? ⼦子思⼦子憂道學之失其傳⽽而作也. 自上 古 聖 神 繼 天立 極, ⽽而

道 統之傳有自來矣. 其見於經, 則“允執厥中,”者堯之所以授舜也.“⼈人⼼心惟危，道

⼼心惟微，惟精惟⼀一，允執厥中”者, 舜之所以授禹也. 堯之⼀一⾔言, ⾄至矣, 盡矣！蓋

嘗論之: ⼼心之虛靈知覺，⼀一⽽而已矣. ⽽而以為有⼈人⼼心, 道⼼心之異者，則以其或⽣生於

形氣之私, 或原於性命之正. ⽽而所以為知覺者不同. 是以或危殆⽽而不安, 或微妙⽽而

難見耳. 然⼈人莫不有是形故雖上智不能無⼈人⼼心; 亦莫不有是性, 故雖下愚不能無

道⼼心. ⼆二者雜於⽅方⼨寸之間, ⽽而不知所以治之, 則危者愈危，微者愈微，⽽而天理之

公卒無以勝夫⼈人欲之私矣…夫堯、舜、禹，天下之⼤大聖也. 以天下相傳, 天下之

⼤大事也. 以天下之⼤大聖, ⾏行天下之⼤大事, ⽽而其授受之際丁寧告戒, 不過如此. 則天

下之理, 豈有以加於此哉? 自是以來, 聖聖相承: 若成湯, ⽂文, 武之為君; 皋陶, 伊,

傅, 周, 召之為臣. 既皆以此⽽而接夫道統之傳. 若吾夫⼦子, 則雖不得其位, ⽽而所以繼

往聖開來學其功反有賢於堯順者. 然當是時, 見⽽而知之者, 惟顏⽒氏, 曾⽒氏之傳得

其宗. 及曾⽒氏之再傳, ⽽而復得夫⼦子之孫⼦子思，則去聖遠⽽而異端起矣. ⼦子思懼夫愈

久⽽而愈失其真也, 於是推本堯舜以來相傳之意, 質以平日所聞⽗父師之⾔言, 更互演

繹, 作為此書, 以詔後之學者…自是⽽而又再傳以得孟⽒氏, 為能推明是書, 以承先聖

之統, 及其沒⽽而遂失其傳焉. 則吾道之所寄不越乎⾔言語⽂文字之閒, ⽽而異端之說日

新月盛, 以⾄至於老佛之徒出. 則彌近理⽽而⼤大亂真矣. 然⽽而尚幸此書之不泯…

How was it that the Zhongyong was made? Master Zisi ⼦子思, anxious that the

transmission of the learning of the way would be lost, composed it. Once the sages

and spirits of high antiquity set up the heavenly ordained ultimate, then the

transmission of the legacy of the way came automatically. It is manifest in the

Classics in the phrase “sincerely grasp the mean” and constituted Yao’s 堯

succession to Shun 舜. The saying “the human mind is precarious; the dao mind is

subtle; it is pure and singular; sincerely grasp the mean” constituted Shun’s

succession to Yu 禹. Yao’s single phrase addition made the legacy complete and

comprehensive... It is said that the mind’s vacuity (xinzhixu ⼼心之虛) singulary

[contains] spiritual presence (ling 靈) and consciousness (zhijue 知覺). Yet, I believe

that there is a difference between the human mind and the dao mind: one is made

from the selfishness of physical forms, while the other originates from the rectitude

of the nature’s decree. This is why those who have consciousnesses are not alike.

Thus one mind is precarious and unsettled, while the other is subtle, hard to see or

hear. However, everyone has physical form so that even the wisest have the human

mind; everyone has this nature, so that even the most dimwitted have the dao mind.

The two are brought together within the space of a square inch, so if you do not

know how to rule them, then the precarious becomes more precarious and the subtle

more subtle, thus in the end the impartiality of heaven’s pattern will be unable to

subdue the selfishness of human desire…Yao, Shun, and Yu were the greatest sages

of the world, and their transmission of the ministry of the world was their greatest

achievement. So if at this juncture of the greatest sages in the universe accomplished

its greatest achievement with the use of merely the Heavenly principle of the [Da Yu

mo] how could anything be added to it? From this time forward various sages have

passed on the responsibility of [this achievement] such as Cheng Tang 成湯 , Wen

⽂文, and Wu 武 [who transmitted it] as jun 君; Gao 臯, Tao 陶, and Yi 伊 transmitted

it to [Duke of]Zhou 周 and [Duke of] Zhao 召 as chen 臣. They all maintained that

this succession was the dao legacy transmission. Like my master [Kongzi], although

he did not get a position [as did the others] because he continued the teachings of the

sages and opened the way for future study his accomplishment was as worthy as that

of Yao and Shun. However, from that time those who understood the teaching were

only the Yan 顏 [Hui] family branch and the Zeng 曾[Zi] family branch, [so] they

received the transmission of their [Yao and Shun’s] lineage (qizong 其宗). By the

time the Zeng family further transmitted the legacy to [my] Master’s grandson, Zisi,

the Sages were remote and other different doctrines [other Zhan’guo teachings] arose.

Zisi feared that with time the tradition would lose purity, so he inferred the ideas of

the original transmission from Yao and Shun on down, and gave them substance by

adding as illustrations the words he heard daily from his father and teacher,

composed this book [Centrality and Commonality] to instruct later students...From

Zisi [the legacy] was transmitted over two generations to Mengzi 孟⼦子, who was

able to understand this book and to be faithful to the legacy of the first sage

maintaining the tradition. But, at his death, the transmission was lost. Thus, the

endurance of our way depended solely on the phrases and graphs of this text. Still,

other theories arose overnight and flourished as the disciples of Lao[zi]老 and

Buddha 佛 arrived. Because their doctrines resembled that of [the learning of]

pattern (lixue 理學), truth was overcome by massive chaos. Therefore, we are

fortunate that this book was not lost.49

In essence, Zhu’s Preface is simply an elaborate confirmation in print of the efficacy of his

earlier sacrifice of 1194. Yet, here he invents de novo a textual history that affords the possibility of

episodic transmission, casting it back to the time of the sages and culture heroes. As he pointed out

often, the sages had no texts; these began with Kongzi. The sages lived in illo tempore, in an

arcadia where words were deeds and action was tacitly understood. All was performance and this

was truth. In antiquity the immediacy of event and experience banished the prospect of writing and

so the sages’ agency was immediate and their language oral: 古 ⼈人 自 ⼊入 小 學 時, 已 自 知 許 多

事 了. ⾄至 ⼊入 ⼤大 學 時, 只 要 做 此 ⼯工 夫. 今 ⼈人 全 未 曾 知 此. “When the Ancients began

elementary learning, they already knew most things; when later they undertook the great learning

they simply executed this moral effort. People today are not yet able to comprehend this.”50

Forgetfulness, a measure of the distance between heroes and men, myth and history, made

sagely action precarious to transmission and so writing emerged. (Perhaps this is one reason Zhu Xi

insisted on reading texts aloud.) Memory and forgetting are undecidably linked in Zhu’s mind, so

vulnerable is the mean to loss, however, that he entrusts it to a sequence of titles datable to high

antiquity but current in his own day. Descent is the conceptual foundation here, repeatedly affirmed

by Zhu’s frequent use of chuan 傳, “handed down,” “passed on,” and especially the reference to

qizong 其宗, “their lineage.” Two aspects of this marvelous familial conception are worthy of note.

First, the patriarchs of daotong, the sages of antiquity, are presented in descending order of

chronology and official status. Yao, Shun, and Yu are all dasheng ⼤大聖, “great sages,” while

Cheng Tang, and Kings Wen and Wu are jun 君, “lords.” Following the jun, there are Zhou and

Zhao both of whom are chen 臣, “ministers.”

Beginning with Kongzi, all subsequent “agnates” do not inherit appointment, although they

do get daotong and serve as “teachers,” shi 師 or, “masters,” fuzi 夫⼦子. Much like the popular

deities who preside over the different strata of the Buddhist underworld, all of whom are officials,

the hallowed xiansheng 先聖 and xianwang 先王 each possessed official title, their emolument

being inclusion in this twelfth-century register of descent. What is even more intriguing about this

reproduction of the larger official world in this highly sectarian sacred transmission, is that the

rungs on the ladder of station bear the labels—chen, jun, shi, fuzi—of the Four Ranks common not

to the Song, but from the time of the Warring Kingdoms.

Secondly, the entire genealogy—like most all genealogies produced during the Song’s shixi

craze—is an elaborate conceit, a story. The original moment of the transmission being particularly

suspect for it employs a patrimonial logic of ascription to describe transmission by merit. Marcel

Granet exploded this mythology long ago when he demonstrated that a strict, and therefore false,

conception of primogeniture had perpetuated a myth of succession by merit.51 But, the “truth” of

Granet’s analysis matters not one wit in this instance, because this alternating transmission between

heir and sage comprised the world picture of Zhu’s day—a mythistory accepted without reservation.

One way to unpack the significance of Zhu’s peculiar genealogical imagination is by turning

to the sociology of Max Weber, because his portrait of institutional development as a process of the

“routinization of charisma” offers a sound theoretical means of explicating the operation of daotong.

Weber conceived of social evolution in terms of charisma, arguing that an inspirational lathe

embodied in a figure of pure charisma formed early societies.52 Inevitably these associations,

bound by ties to a charismatic leader, priest, prophet, chieftain, etc., were routinized in the course of

their institutional development. The critical institutional challenge for these ancient, ecstatic

societies was succession. With the demise of the charismatic figure, how is the vitality of the

society to endure? And, can a method be devised to stabilize this vitality?

Weber reasoned that the twin genetic urges of society—charisma and institutionalization—

dramatically displayed in the anxiety surrounding succession, were negotiated through a logic of

contiguity or implied consanguinity. Whosoever was closest to the charismatic leader would inherit

his numen. Consequently, from that point on charisma would be passed by privileged, personal

links of power, those that were most incontrovertible, those links in the chain of descent. In short,

the priest became a patriarch. Tradition, simple transmission by descent, Weber would point out,

was the most appropriate and visible manifestation of this logic. But what he had neglected to

consider, Zhu Xi implemented. Tradition organized by descent in the manner of Weber’s contact

charisma could be “abridged” in ideology. Rather than actual transmission from a charismatic

figure, the idea of inheritance was the point of origin and this idea could then act as ground for the

replication of a new transmission, especially if that idea were conceived metaphorically as bred of

the blood, bone, and sinew of agnation. This “abridgment of tradition”53 in ideology is the essence

of the genealogical invention that is daotong, but it is a conception that is internally divided.

Zhu’s genealogy of dao eliminated the chronological problem posed by the dao having been

lost after Mengzi, because genealogy dissolves chronology as time is fashioned consonant with the

intention of the genealogist. It appeared that the privileged personal links of transmission were

broken, their legacy the remnants of Zisi’s textual documentation of the zong. Yet, nearly 1200

years later the Four Masters of the Northern Song recovered the dao and the logic of transmission

was, again, in force, Zhu reporting to Kongzi “fortunately nothing was lost.” For Zhu the realiza-

tion of the presence of this transmitted genius and the knowledge that his mind, properly cultivated,

could inherit this legacy, inspired a summary reformulation of all his work for it pointed a way to

textual transcendence.

Qi and the “One Square Inch” Universe

The textual transmission of the Zhongyong, fortified through Zhu’s private descent claim, removed

antiquity (gu 古) from the realm of public appeal;54 it was personalized, transmitted only through

the living links cited here by Zhu and which were rehearsed in the daily rites of jingshe life as well

as the textually reconstructed transmissions of the Yülei. One way of reading the tension between

the sinographs and the lineage they create is to see Zhu as reconfiguring the function of the text as

to overcome the limitations of the printed word. A genealogical conception of this sort goes far in

establishing a definitive claim against diverse intellectual traditions of one’s era; however, this is in

my reading a secondary consequence.

In light of the reports Zhu made to Kongzi and Mengzi in the last decade of his life, I would

urge a more personal, possessive significance for this urgently rewritten preface of 1198. Clans are

bound generation to generation by blood, bone, sinew; Zhu’s use of zong is more than figurative.

The politics of the genealogy ensures that no single tradition lying outside Zhu’s claim could assert

authentic recovery of the essential teaching of high antiquity. Moreover, the exclusive claim to

antiquity’s legacy of dao is framed within a narrative of loss, the failure of norms to be transmitted

in public practice and to be remembered by later generations. But, this legacy was redeemable,

situated as it was in the space of one square inch—the heart.

Understanding this, modern intellectual historians of a religiously unmusical bent must

wonder how Zhu construed the metaphysics of his inspired genealogy with its cultic sacrifices to

Kongzi and the masters of the Northern Song. Or how it was that he reconciled a rational, dualistic

metaphysics and his “superstitious” belief in the efficacy of spirits. The query’s answer is

immediately at hand because it is all around us—qi, “vital vapor.” In response to a student’s

question about the presence of qi, the teacher explains:

天 地 間 無 非 ⼈人 之 氣 與 天 地 之 氣 常 相 接, 無 間 斷, ⼈人 自 不 見. ⼈人 ⼼心 才

動, 必 達 於 氣, 便 與 這 屈 伸 往 來 者 相 感 通.

Vital vapor (qi) is everywhere between sky and earth; the vital vapor of people is

constantly and uninterruptedly connected to the vital vapor of sky and earth.

Although we don’t see it, whenever the human mind moves, it always reaches vital

vapor and interacts with that which comes and goes. It resembles a form of

divination…55

When one reads these inscriptions alongside Zhu’s exchanges with his students on the subject of

ghosts and spirits (gui, shen), and has in mind the ontology of medieval China in which qi is the

constitutive force of the universe, the prospects for communion with a spirit that is not one’s

ancestor come into focus. According to Zhu Xi, all one must do is stimulate, gan 感, the spirit by

reverence. Death generates elaborate responsibility for descendents. Most salient in these

responsibilities is the act of feeding the dead (xiao 孝),56 that term which in the Lunyu means filial

respect for one’s living parents. If the dead are not offered food and nourishment in proper ritual

deference, if they are ignored, then they may mutate into ghosts, hungry ghosts. The suffering

caused by neglect will inevitably provoke maleficent intervention on the living by the afflicted

ghost. This is the cosmogony of the Chinese moral universe: a ceaseless dialectic of suffering (that

of the family who loses a loved one and that of the ancestors who are no longer embodied) and

relief produced through the periodic attentive detail of sacrifice and prayer or if necessary spirit

possession and exorcism.

In its proper attitude of reverence (jing) the mind instinctively responds to its master (zhu 主)

and recovers the genuine transmission. The dao legacy was sustained at the level of reflection as a

transmission imagined. Minds could be linked across millennia, for each was constituted out of a qi

which might disperse but is not destroyed and the link, if not as personal, was at least as powerful as

that of blood descent. The logic of transmission of daotong is more akin to the special lines of

sympathy that join the living and the dead in the ancestral cult as can be seen in this exchange from

the Yulei:

然 其 氣 雖 已 散, 這 箇 天 地 陰 陽 之 理 ⽣生 ⽽而 不 窮. 袓 考 之 精 神 魂 魄 雖 已

散, ⽽而 ⼦子 孫 之 精 神 魂 魄 自 有 些 小 相 屬. 故 祭 杷 之 禮 盡 其 誠 敬, 便 可

以 致 得 袓 考 之 魂 魄. 這 箇 自 是 難 說. 看 既 散 後, ⼀一 似 都 無 了. 能 盡 其

誠 敬, 便 有 感 格, 亦 緣 是 理 常 只 在 這 裡 也.

Although (their) ancestors’ qi has dispersed, this pattern of celestial terrestrial yin 隱

and yang 陽 provides for inexhaustible birth and reproduction. Although the ances-

tors’ spirit and hunpo 魂魄 have dispersed, nevertheless, the spirit and the hunpo of

the descendants naturally have some relation to their ancestors. Therefore, when

they perform sacrifice with sincerity and reverence, they are able to communicate

with their ancestors’ hunpo. These [phenomena] are hard to explain. [Descendants]

recognize that [their ancestors’ souls] have already dispersed and that they have all

vanished completely. [Still] they can exhaustively exert their integrity and reverence

and thereby achieve contact [with their ancestors] because their principle is right

here.57

Zhu’s reliance on agnatic imagery is not a mere metaphor by which he illuminates the difference

between genuine (zhen 真) and false (jia 假). Rather, the family/clan is a figurative predication of

the transmission of the ancients’ words. More than a conceit, the qi of his cultural ancestors

provides a mortal immortality. The root, metaphorically referring to the sincerity (cheng 誠) of the

descendants’ worship of their ancestor, is formed in the heart and grows out into the practices of the

faithful. This is a language of sinographic immediacy, not merely of the clan, but of the very

physicality of the body. Zhu’s rhetoric hints at a deeply personal refuge where, having transcended

the text, one could converse with the immortals hearing firsthand the words that were transcribed in

the classics and later canonized.

The heart, “the space of one square inch,” was made of qi, and so it could be construed as a

place where living and the dead might be joined. This may not appear to us on the surface as a

modern, philosophically defensible notion, but for Zhu Xi, whose troubled conscience could be

assuaged with the promise of personal inspiration, it certainly was a rational one. Though the

interpretive reflex incited by this claim would emphasize sectarianism, I think the principal reason

for Zhu’s appeal to organic metaphors is his interest in a more immediate apprehension of the dao.

Responding to a student’s query about the location of li (“pattern”), the implicit moral architecture

of the cosmos, Zhu poignantly conveys the presumptions of an imagination that closed the space

between himself and the ancient sages in an allegory unconducive to texts:

凡物有⼼心⽽而其中必虛, 如飲食中雞⼼心豬⼼心之屬, 切開可見. ⼈人⼼心亦然. 只這虛, 便

包藏許多道理, 彌綸天地, 該括古今, 推廣得來, 蓋天蓋地, 莫不由此, 此所以為⼈人

⼼心之妙歟. 理在⼈人⼼心, 是之謂性. 性如⼼心之田地, 充此中虛, 莫非是理⽽而已. ⼼心是神

明之舍, 為⼀一身之主宰.

All things have a heart (xin ⼼心) and within it must be empty. When preparing a pig

or chicken for the table one cuts open its heart [and] one can see this. The human

heart is identical. Only these empty places contain and preserve the infinite pattern

of the dao that fills heaven and earth and embraces past and present. Extending them

[out] and receiving [them back], [this pattern] covers heaven and covers earth. There

is nothing that does not come from this. It is for this reason that the human heart is

mysterious.58

Such mystery as this could be fathomed only through regular intercourse and by the hard work of

caring for the physical space of the dead and the living. Ecology grew from the surrounding matter

and spirit and so it was that men like Zhu Xi took great pains to employ geomancy to determine

proper orientation of buildings, shrines, schools, and for the careful translation of his parents’

remains and, most notably, in determining the most favorable burial site for his eldest son.

The interval of time that has passed between this ritualized life and our own is sufficiently great to

encumber our understanding of the mentalité of medieval Chinese. Nevertheless, an enduring belief

in qi enables us to cope with the encumbrance of time and our “modern” sentiment to bring near

what seems far. Such belief may also help to explain such well-discussed dimensions of Zhu’s

epistemological discourse as weifa/yifa 未法/以法. More significantly it illuminates his insistence

on self-cultivation with an inner master (zhuzai主宰) who can be conjured via reverent submission

in the state of “submerged nurturance” (hanyang 涵養) he believed critical to the efficacy of

“summoning things” (gewu 格物).59 The body god of self-cultivation, textual study, and above all

the reverent superior of sacrifice—the zhuzai of Zhu Xi’s heart, Kongzi, was poised delicately at the

synapse of what is manifesting and what is manifested in conscious human being.

Envoi

Putting aside the issue of Confucianism and/or Neo-Confucianism as a religion or as a unique

bearer of the cultural life of the Chinese, I have attempted to disassociate Zhu Xi from the very

legacy from which he has been so closely identified for good and for ill. Rather I believe, as

attempted in this chapter, it benefits our understanding to place him in a dimmer, less scrutable

light—that of his own day and that of the worldview he shared with the students of his fellowship,

his friends, and those communities that he served as a low-ranking official. What all these Song era

people shared was what we as latter-day interpreters lack: sensitivity to the sensuous, to the vitality

of their natural environment. It was this sensitivity, this awareness outside of cognition, that

accounted for Zhu Xi’s belief in the efficacy of local magic: spirit possession, the summoning of the

dead through personation, the power of ghosts to demand service of the living, and the credulity that

he leant to supernatural phenomena.

Ignoring the sensitivity to the natural rhythms of the complementary lives of the visible and

the invisible, because it is difficult to reconcile with our accepted mythistory of Zhu’s “completion”

of Neo-Confucianism, has hobbled all scholarly efforts to understand and explain his novel

conception of daotong or to account for its compelling power. Without this understanding of the

definitive links between the animistic lifeways of his day, and a philosophical gambit to join Zhu’s

contemporary followers to an extinguished tradition, daotong can be no more than an exclusivist

play for legitimacy among an increasingly rivalrous coterie of reformist, abstract readings of the key

phrases in a disembodied classical canon. This is indeed what ruxue has become among today’s

xinruxuemen who defend New Confucianism as a foundation of cultural and ethical revival. And,

this is why the inner promise of autonomous moral agency in Zhu Xi’s daoxue is forever lost in the

bantering inconsequence of the well-compensated contemporary technicians of ru discourse.60

NOTES 1 Southern Fujian in the middle period was the empire’s hub for transshipment of commercial goods to foreign ports.

As Hugh Clark has pointed out, this economic activity prominently affected the religious lifeways of this area during the

Southern Song. See “The Religious Culture of Southern Fujian, 750–1450: Preliminary Reflections on Contacts across a

Maritime Frontier,” in Asia Major, Third Series, volume 19, part 1/2 (2006): 211-240. 2 Judith Boltz, “Not by the Seal of Office Alone: New Weapons in the Battle with the Supernatural,” in Patricia Buckley

Ebrey and Peter N. Gregory, eds., Religion and Society in T’ang and Sung China (Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press,

1993), 241-305. 3 The translation attempts to get at the numinous properties of the location as well as the frame of mind. According to de

Groot, the graph 舍 she’s earliest meaning was a “megalithic house of the dead.” However, she referred to much more

than this. She was a distinct form of ritual worship of the spirits of the earth that, Ned Davis has argued, underwent

dramatic change in the Song, proliferating throughout rural and urban China. The graph jing 精 bears close association

with a range of terms representing extra-human physical and spiritual presence such as gui 鬼, hun 魂, ling靈, po 魄, qi

氣, shen 神, and xian 仙, thus accounting for my use of “wondrous.” See J. J. M. de Groot, The Religious System of

China, Its Ancient Forms, Evolution, History and Present Aspect, Manners, Customs and Social Institutions Connected

Therewith, vol. 1 (Leiden: E. J. Brill, 1892) and Davis, Society and the Supernatural in Song China, 12-13. 4 Delphine Ziegler, “The Cult of the Wuyi Mountains and Its Cultivation of the Past: A Topo-Cultural Perspective.” In

Cahiers d’Extrême-Asie, vol. 10 (1998): 255-286, esp. 272-273. See also Wang Mouhong 王懋竑, ed., Zhuzi nianpu 朱

子年譜 (Taipei: Shijie shuju, 1962). 5 See Zhu Xi 朱熹, Zhuzi daquan 朱子大全 (photocopy, Sibu beiyao edition, Yunnan Provincial Library, Kunming), 44:

76.26b-27a. 6 “Learning of the Way” is the conventional translation of this compound; however, I have chosen to emphasize the

cosmological and extraordinary significance of dao by rendering it as “cosmic.” 7 Hubert Seiwert, Popular Religious Movements and Heterodox Sects in Chinese History (Leiden: E. J. Brill, 2003), 173. 8 While it is customary to refer to such behavior as “religious,” I remain suspicious of this analytic habit, derived as it is

from structural functionalism. This suspicion is exacerbated by the lack of a Chinese term for “religion” before the early

twentieth century and the very significant political and sociological impulses of the Chinese nationhood enterprise to

shape a coherent unifying narrative of religion. The terminology is problematic but it need not handicap us, only offer a

reminder of the necessity of care for what we are reading and interpreting. Through the lenses or particular texts, what

we are observing in retrospect is a congeries of independent, local ritual practices largely generated from and sustained

through lineage. I prefer Kenneth Dean’s recent characterization of “local communal religion”: “a vast array of different

ritual traditions, some of considerable longevity and complexity, all intertwining in different ways in different places.”

See Kenneth Dean and Zheng Zhenman, Ritual Alliances of the Putian Plain 2 vols. (Leiden: E. J. Brill, 2010), vol. 1,

Historical Introduction to the Return of the Gods, 43-52, esp. 46. 9 Zhuzi wenji, juan 100. Zhu complained that “they gather at night and disperse at dawn while men and women are not

separated” employing phrasing virtually identical to that of a memorial submitted nearly 20 years later (see endnote 34)

repudiating the night meetings of lay sects, specifically daomin, in Fujian. Zhu may have been more concerned with the

specific activity, usually songjing 誦經 “sutra chanting,” at these gatherings. See also Zhuzi yulei, juan 90, 10 and 56. 10 Seiwert, Popular Religious Movements, 162-163. 11 Across the villages and homes of Southern Song, families sought the intercession of fashi 法師 (“lay Daoist

exorcists”), rather than daoshi or foshi , as Ned Davis has shown. Efficacy derived from those mediums who were not

touched by ecclesiastic authority. Edward L. Davis, Society and the Supernatural in Song China (Honolulu: University

of Hawai’i Press, 2002), esp. 54-59, 84-86. 12 An 1198 memorial to the throne complained that the daomin were chicai [xiao?] shimo 嗤菜(笑)事魔 (“derisive

demon servers”) and that they made themselves distinct from other social groups to “form a clan of their own.” Song

huiyao jigao, 宋會要楫稿 8 vols. (Beijing: Zhonghua shuju, 1997) juan 165, 130a-130b. Daomin congregations were

independent of any supervision by ecclesiastical authority and distinguished by local idiosyncrasy marked by abstention

from alcohol, pork, and odiferous vegetables. They were celibate and engaged in merit seeking through the construction

of shrines and temples and the repair of bridges. Local populations welcomed their activities and respected their

societies as “congregations of activist lay Buddhists.” The memorial, like others in subsequent years that expressed

concern about daomin, were not per se denunciations of heterodoxy, because what they described as suspect behavior

was largely similar to that of most religious practice of lay Buddhist groups. Seiwert, Popular Religious Movements,

167-173. See also Richard von Glahn, The Sinister Way: The Divine and the Demonic in Chinese Religious Culture

(Berkeley: University of California Press, 2004). 13 Mark Halperin, Out of the Cloister: Literati Perspectives on Buddhism in Sung China, 960-1279 (Cambridge, MA:

Harvard University Asia Center, 2006), 17-26. 14 These developments have been very well documented by, among others, Ned Davis, Richard von Glahn, Barend ter

Haar, Robert Hymes, and Hubert Seiwert. See Davis, Society and the Supernatural in Song China, von Glahn, The

Sinister Way, 130-179, Barend ter Haar, Telling Stories: Witchcraft and Scapegoating in Chinese History (Leiden: E. J.

Brill, 2005), Robert Hymes, Way and Byway: Taoism, Local Religion, and Models of Divinity in Sung and Modern

China (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2002), and Seiwert, Popular Religious Movements and Heterodox

Sects. 15 Edward L. Davis, “Arms and the Dao, 2: the Xu Brothers in Tea Country,” Livia Kohn and Harold. D. Roth, eds.,

Daoist Identity: History, Lineage, and Ritual (Honolulu: University of Hawai’i Press, 2002), 160. 16 Zhuzi yulei, juan 59, 7. 17 Zhu Xi 朱熹, Xu jinsi lu 續近思錄, in Zhang Boxing jijie 張伯⾏行集解 (Fuzhou: Zhengyi shuyuan, 1866). 18 Zhuzi yulei, juan 3, 37.

19 It is necessary here to call on Stephan Feuchtwang’s apposite language in describing ling: “the imposition of

supernatural power or efficacy into actual resolutions.” Moreover, as Feuchtwang notes, this imposition occurs at a

specific site, “a center appropriately oriented to a greater concentration of power on a transcendent plane.” Stephan

Feuchtwang, The Imperial Metaphor: Popular Religion in China (London: Routledge, 1992). 20 See the insightful exploration of both the literal and symbolic meaning of the use of zidi among Zhu Xi and his

followers in Hoyt Cleveland Tillman, “Zhu Xi’s Prayers to the Spirit of Confucius and the Claim to Transmission of the

Way,” in Philosophy East and West 54.4 (October 2004), 501-502. 21 Zhuzi yulei, juan 107, . 既啟門, 先⽣生陞堂, 率⼦子弟以次列拜炷香, 又拜⽽而退. ⼦子弟⼀一⼈人詣⼟土地之祠炷香⽽而拜. 隨侍

登閣, 拜先聖像, ⽅方坐書院, 受早揖, 飲湯少坐, 或有請問⽽而去. 月朔, 影堂薦酒果; 望日, 則薦茶; 有時物, 薦新⽽而後

食. See also Lionel M. Jensen, “Zhu Xi, Popular Cults and Confucian Paideia,” unpublished paper presented at the

Conference on Religion and Society in T’ang and Sung China,” University of Illinois at Champaign-Urbana, October 19,

1987, 16-19. Here I discuss “rites of framing” peculiar to each day and also “rites of discipline” including work,

reading aloud, textual study, as well as interchange with Master Zhu. In another work I go into greater detail on the

significance of the aural and oral properties of reading dushu as they reinforce the function of sound as testament of

understanding and acknowledgment of contact with the “masters” zi 子 of texts. See Lionel M. Jensen, “Re-enchanting

Confucianism: Mythistory and the Supernatural in the Making of Tradition,” ms., chapter four “Spirits, Flesh and

Philosophy.” 22 Marcel Mauss, “Les techniques de corps,” Journal de Psychologie, XXXII, ne, 3-4 (15 mars - 15 avril 1936). It is

important to note in this context that my use of habitus is not derived from the work of Pierre Bourdieu where the term

refers to socialized norms that direct thinking and behavior. What is particularly meaningful for me in with respect to

Mauss’s understanding is the interplay between performance and proposition, rhythm and language. See also Haun

Saussy, The Ethnography of Rhythm: Orality and Its Technologies (New York: Fordham University Press, 2016). 23 The immediate properties of “hearing” what has been taught and obeying it as if it is a command is what Zhu Xi tries

to get at in using “heard,” to explain his understanding of the teachings of the Cheng brothers: 聞於程氏之學. Zhuzi

wenji, juan 78, 1435.1. 24 ⼤大抵觀書先須熟讀，使其⾔言皆若出於吾之⼝口；繼以精思，使其意皆若出於吾之⼼心, 然後可以有得爾. Zhuzi

yulei, vol. 10, 165. 25 Charles Nodier, Dictionnaire raisonné des onomatopées françaises (Paris: Delangle Frères, 1828), 46. 26 Gaston Bachelard, The Poetics of Space, Maria Jolas, trans. (Boston: Beacon Press, 1969) and Steven Feld and Keith

H. Basso, eds., Senses of Place (Santa Fe, NM: School of American Research Press, 1997). 27 Language such as this—inversion, inward turns and the like—undoubtedly recalls James T. C. Liu’s critical work,

China Turning Inward: Intellectual-Political Changes in the Early Twelfth Century (Cambridge, MA: Harvard

University East Asia Monographs, 1989), but my interest here is in both the physical and the psychological inwardness

that is evidenced in Zhu’s conscious career choices and in his reconstruction of the moral architecture of the self-

cultivation on the model of neidan. His familiarity with the latter is easily inferred from the Yulei discussions of li and qi

in the second juan. More significantly, though, Zhu himself authored (ca. 1198) a pseudonymous commentary on the

Cantong qi 参同契 (Zhouyi Cantong qi kaoyi 周易参同契考異) one of the earliest works devoted to the methods of

neidan. As author, the name he assumed, Kongtong daoshi Zouxin 空同道士鄒訢, “Empty Hollow Dao Priest Zou Xin”

conveys, at a minimum, his familiarity (playful) with the argot of Daoist literary practice and a clever effort to bend the

nomenclature in the direction of daoxue legitimacy. See Kristopher Schipper and Franciscus Verellen, eds., The Taoist

Canon: A Historical Companion to the Daozang , vol. 2 ( Chicago, University of Chicago Press, 2004), 701-702. 28 Ellen G. Neskar, “The Cult of Worthies: A Study of Shrines Honoring Local Confucian Worthies in the Sung

Dynasty, 960-1279,” Ph. D, dissertation, Columbia University, New York, 1993, 157-206. 29 Zhuzi yulei, juan 3, 46. 30 Zhuzi yulei, juan 90, 94. 31 This is the argument of Thomas Wilson, Genealogy of the Way: The Construction and Uses of the Confucian

Tradition in Late Imperial China (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1995), 77-91. 32On the founding of the Cangzhou jingshe, see the transcript of Zhu’s report to Kongzi, “Cangzhou jingshe gao

xiansheng wen,” Zhuzi wenji, 1548.1. See also Tillman, “Zhu Xi’s Prayers to the Spirit of Confucius,” 503-504. 33 See the discussion of ancient conceptions of the sacred properties of earth in chapter two. 34 On “Rites of Summoning for Investigation” (kaozhao fa 考召法), see Davis, Society and the Supernatural, 96-102,

198-199. 35 Zhu was very practiced at sacrifice, of course, and devoted much to the particular ritual theatrics of the cult of the

dead in the Zhuzi jiali. The jiali has been translated by Patricia Ebrey and many have commented on its effect on

popular practice. However, Ebrey’s implicit reading of the rites as a kind of enforced constraint by elites is

interpretively problematic in its two-tiered (high and low culture) segregation of popular religious practice. Furthermore,

this reading of the Song quotidian never gets at the relations that obtain between sacrifice and prayer, an area that

requires considerable investigation in the cult of the worthies, the founding of jingshe, and the practice of the ancestor

cult. A good start on treating this problem may be found in David L. Lieber and Jules Harlow, eds., Etz Hayim: Torah

and Commentary (New York: Jewish Publication Society of America, 2001) where one reads:

Ritual sacrifices were offered in the sanctuary in the wilderness. Yet the Torah prescribes virtually no

prayers, blessings, or verbal formulas for recitation during the sacrificial ritual…Individuals came to

pray, and at various occasions prayer gatherings were held within its precincts. None of this, however,

was linked to the sacrifices… Verbal forms of worship developed at the same time that sacrificial

rituals were practiced. Prayers became the sacrifices of our lips; sacrifices became non-verbal prayers.

(emphasis mine) Neither was considered acceptable if the individual was insincere…. Once the

Temple was established in Jerusalem, silence was overcome. (Etz Hayim, 1453) 36 Zhu Xi, “Cangzhou jingshe gao xiansheng wen,” Zhuzi wenji, 1548.1. 37 This title was conferred by the Supreme Lord Renzong 仁宗 in 1030 and represents the most elevated of posthumous

nominations. On the history and intrigue of Kongzi’s imperial recognition, see Wilson, On Sacred Grounds, and

Michael Nylan and Thomas A. Wilson, The Lives of Confucius (New York: Doubleday, 2010), 138-163. 38 Such rhetorical flourish indicates the influence of his student, who wisely urged Zhu to be cautious in setting forth a

dao cosmic legacy that included culture heroes and scholars, but no imperial figures. See Chu-ying Li and Charles

Hartman, “A Newly Discovered Inscription by Qin Gui: Its Implications for the History of Song Daoxue,” Harvard

Journal of Asiatic Studies, 70.2 (June 2010): 387-448, have reconstructed the complex political history of the official

Song proscription of Daoxue emphasizing that the private conception of daotong was a direct and conscious threat to

the daotong that had been celebrated as the grand achievement of the Supreme Lord Gaozong himself by his chief

councilor, Qin Gui 秦檜, and leading to a series of violent purges. 39 For the significance Zhu Xi attached to his mother’s gravesite, see also Tillman, “Zhu Xi’s Prayers to the Spirit of

Confucius,” 496. Here Zhu reveals the persistence of the ancient conception of the unique magical efficacy of earth

from tombs, also evident in the myths surrounding the conception of Kongzi and his birth that were explored in Chapter

Two. 40 Zhuzi yulei, 3, 34. 41 Liji zhengyi 禮記正義(Shanghai: Guji Chubanshe, 1990), vol. 1, 393.2. Morohashi offers that shicai referred to

sacrificial rites conducted at schools in recognition of “the first sage and the first teacher” (Kongzi). The ceremony was

conducted in the spring and consisted of a vegetable offering. Tetsuji Morohashi 諸橋轍次, Daikanwa jiten ⼤大漢和辭

典, vol. 11 (Tokyo: Dai-shukan shoten, 1977), 11952. 42 Yijing, 43 On the animistic properties of the written text, see David Abram, The Spell of the Sensuous: Perception and

Language in a More-than-Human World (New York: Vintage Books, 1996), 93-135. 44 Zhuzi wenji, . 45 Zhuzi yülei, 90.7. 46 For consideration of writing as a signature of vitality, living embodiment and the oracular, see Michel Strickmann,

Poetry and Prophecy: The Written Oracle in East Asia, Bernard Faure, ed. (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2005),

87-97. 47 Zhuzi yülei, 3.22b. The disciples seek a philosophical explanation here for stories and legends pertaining to the

phenomenon of automatic writing. This is an instance of the inclusion of antecedent zhiguai (志怪) material into the

“transcripts” of oral conversations, and is reminiscent of the popular biji 筆記 genre exemplified by Hong Mai’s Yijian

zhi. 48 See Hong Mai 洪邁, “Luofu xianren 羅浮仙⼈人,” in Yijian zhi 夷堅志 49 Zhu Xi, “Zhongyong zhangjü xu,” 中庸章句序 in Sishu jizhu 四書集註 (rpt., Taipei: Xuehai chubanshe, 1984), 19-

20. 50 Zhu Xi, Zhuzi quanshu 朱⼦子全書, photocopy of the Yuanjian zhai edition of 1713, juan 1, 1b-2a, Zhuzi yülei, vol. 7,

124. 51 Marcel Granet, La Religion des Chinois (Paris: Presses Universitaires de France, 1953), 65-87. 52 S. N. Eisenstadt, ed., Max Weber on Charisma and Institution-Building (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1968). 53J. G. A. Pocock, “Time, Institutions, and Action,” Politics, Language, and Time: Essays on Political Thought and

History (New York: Atheneum, 1973), 54 This conceptual maneuver was largely consistent with Zhu’s attitude toward history: . See Conrad Schirokauer,

“Chu Hsi’s Sense of History,” Conrad Schirokauer Robert P. Hymes and, eds., Ordering the World: Approaches to

State and Society in Sung Dynasty China (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1993), 193-220. 55 Zhuzi yülei, vol. 3, 34.

56 Keith Knapp, “The Ru Reinterpretation of Xiao,” Early China 20 (1995), 195-222, esp. 196-200. 57 Zhuzi yulei, vol. 3. 46. 58 Zhu Xi, Zhuzi yulei, Li Jingde 黎靖德, ed. (Chuan jing tang edition, 1880), juan 98, 8a-b. 59 Mou Zongsan 牟宗三, Xinti yu xingti ⼼心體輿性體, vol. 3 (Taibei: Zhongzheng shuju, 1968), 292. This is a dimension

of the argument that cannot be developed sufficiently in the space remaining. Nonetheless, an investigation of the

correspondence in 1170 between Zhu and Zhang Nanxuan 張南軒 (1133-1180) on the topic of zhong 中 (equilibrium)

and he 和 (harmony) along with Zhu’s disquisition on jing 敬 (reverence) reveals a careful philosophical

reconfiguration of the mind by means of the metaphors of spirit possession. See Jensen, “Kongzi, Zhu Xi, and the

World Pictures of Confucianism,” unpubl. Ms. 60 This last line contains an oblique reference to Jean Paul Sartre’s sharp and very meaningful distinction between

“intellectuals” and “technicians of knowledge.” See Jean Paul Sartre, “A Plea for Intellectuals,” in idem., John

Matthews, trans. Between Existentialism and Marxism (New York: William Morrow, 1976), 228-285.