CHENG XUANYING AND THE STUDY OF THE TWOFOLD MYSTERY1

Tang Yijie

The concept of “Twofold Mystery” comes from the phrase “mystery upon mystery 玄之又玄” in the Tao-te-ching. Its study developed grad- ually after the Jin Dynasty. In the remaining pages of the Dunhuang manuscript of Cheng Xuanying’s, Introduction to the Annotation on the , it says: When one explains and annotates the classic scriptures, one ought to know the beliefs they contain. Moreover, annotations highlight certain points more than others and so vary according to the time they belong to. Yan Junping’s Zhigui 旨归 centered on the Mysterious Vacuity as belief, Gu Huijun’s Tanggao 堂诰 on Non-action, Meng Zhizhou and Zang Xuanjing on Virtue, Emperor Wu of the Liang Dynasty on “Nei- ther Existence Nor Non-existence,” and Deng of the Jin Dynasty on the Twofold Mystery. Today, in spite of such different focuses, we consider Sun Deng’s work as orthodox, the Twofold Mystery as its sub- ject, and Non-action as its basis. What we call xuan means “remote and profound,” and also “without obstacle.” Speech is remote and profound without obstacle or attachment. It is not attached to existence, or non- existence. It is not attached to attachment, or non-attachment. There is no attachment in the ‘four negations’, that is what we call the Twofold Mystery. So it is said in the Tao Te Ching: “Mystery upon mystery—the gateway to manifold secrets.” In this passage the author develops three ideas: first, annotators ana- lyzed the classics according to their beliefs. The annotations on the deep significance of the Tao Te Ching are often different for that rea- son. Second, the author introduced the focal points of all the impor- tant annotations on the Tao Te Ching. He particularly refers to Sun Deng, who “had taken the Twofold Mystery as belief ” and had con- sidered it as orthodox. Third, the author explained the “Twofold Mystery” by emphasizing that “[i]t is not attached to attachment, nor

1 Published originally in Tang Yijie, Weijin xuanxuelun jiangyi 魏晋玄学论讲义, Xia- men, Lujiang chubanshe, 2006. 150 tang yijie non-attachment. There is no attachment in the ‘four negations,’ that is what we call the Twofold Mystery.” Sun Deng lived during the Jin Dynasty. In Sun Deng’s biography in the Jinshu we find: “he was good at philosophy when he was young. He annotated the Lao-tzu, which was widely circulated.” The “Treatise of Bibliography” in the Suishu noted the Tao Te Ching, with two chap- ters annotated by Sun Deng. In chapter six, “The Ten Collated Tao- ist Scriptures,” of the Meng Wentong wenji 蒙文通文集 [Collection of the Articles of Meng Wentong], there are 17 annotations by Sun Deng on the Tao Te Ching under the title “Collated Annotations of Forty Authors from the Jin to the Tang dynasties on Lao-tzu.” Two of these 17 anno- tations are most important. The first is the annotation on the sentence “Tao gives birth to One” from the 42nd chapter: “The wonderful One lives in the great vacuity. The mysterious transformation helps the application of the Tao. So we call this process ‘birth,’ according to the origin.” The “wonderful One” means “Tao.” The Tao exists in the universe as a noumenon. The transformation of everything in the uni- verse is the effect of the Tao. The first part of the phrase refers to the Tao as “noumenon,” while the second refers to the “application” of the Tao. Everything in the universe originates from the Tao, which we call “birth.” Obviously, Sun Deng is influenced by Wang Bi’s “Unity of the Noumenon and the Application 体用如一.” The Twofold Mys- tery is influenced by the “High Evaluation of Non-existence 贵无” (or “High Evaluation of the Mystery 贵玄”). The second is the phrase from the 43rd chapter: “the soft can con- quer the hard, while Non-existence can replace Existence. Then we will know that the teaching of Non-action is beneficial to people.” “Non- existence can replace Existence” is the “One Mystery,” which is benefi- cial to people. If we replace “from Non-action” with “Non-existence,” then we can grasp the origin of the Twofold Mystery learning. To reach the “Twofold Mystery” one must first go through the “One Mystery.” Relying on the work of Sun Deng of the Eastern Jin and of many Buddhist and Taoist scholars, Cheng Xuanying constructed the philosophical system of the Taoist Twofold Mystery at the beginning of the . We will briefly introduce the evolution from the Mystery study (or Arcane Learning, ) of the Wei and Jin dynasties to the Twofold Mystery study of the Tang Dynasty.