"Following the Du" and "Having Interstices": A Reinterpretation of the "Zhu" of "Yangshengzhu"

Abstract

The "zhu" 主 of the chapter title "Yangshengzhu" 養生主 has traditionally been construed either as the governing purport of nourishing life, or else given substance as a "lord of life" , the True Ruler (zhenjun), the spirit, the foundation of the elixir, and the like. This paper re-examines the chapter title by way of "follow the du and make it your constant" (yuan du yi wei jing 緣督以為經) and the history of its commentary. Guo Xiang and Li Yi gloss "du" as "the middle"; Wang Fuzhi says that it "has the position of a vessel but no form or substance", while Qu Fu glosses it as "the empty places at the joints of the bones" and goes on to quote Cook Ding's "those joints have interstices while the blade has no thickness". On this basis the paper holds that, at the level of the history of interpretation, a demonstrable structural connection obtains between "following the du" and "having interstices", a connection that may be summed up as "empty yet having a position" (xu er you wei 虛而有位): the "empty" in question must become manifest in dependence on an already given structure, while "having a position" refers at once to the object's having a place through which passage is possible and to the agent's not opposing it with form and substance. This account is neither the philological sense of "du", nor is it sufficient to prove that "du is jian". Taking together Hu Wenying's and Liu Fengbao's interpretation, in which "following the du" points out the word "zhu" of the chapter title, this paper further distinguishes two modes of determinacy, "entity" and "pivot", and maintains that "zhu" may first be understood as the pivot of nourishing life, while "following the du" and Cook Ding's "following what is inherently so" and "entering where there are interstices with what has no thickness" constitute, respectively, the positive statement of that pivot and its allegorical presentation.