Wake Forest University

East Asian Languages and Literatures, Chinese,

Patrick Edwin Moran





Zhu Zi Yu-lei, Juan 1, item 38

Traditional:

問:「自開闢以來,至今未萬年,不知已前如何?」曰: 「已前亦須如此一番明白來。」又問:「天地會壞否?」 曰:「不會壞。只是相將人無道極了,便一齊打合,混沌 一番,人物都盡,又重新起。」問:「生第一箇人時如何 ?」曰:「以氣化。二五之精合而成形,釋家謂之化生。 如今物之化生甚多,如虱然。 」
揚。

Simplified:

问:「自开辟以来,至今未万年,不知已前如何?」曰: 「已前亦须如此一番明白来。」又问:「天地会坏否?」 曰:「不会坏。只是相将人无道极了,便一齐打合,混沌 一番,人物都尽,又重新起。」问:「生第一个人时如何 ?」曰:「以气化。二五之精合而成形,释家谓之化生。 如今物之化生者甚多,如虱然。 」
扬。

big5:

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C

GB:

ʣԿδ֪꣬ǰΣԻ ǰһʣػỵ񣿡 Իỵֻཫ޵ˣһϣ һﶼ𡣡ʣһʱ Ի֮϶Σͼν֮ ֮࣬ʭȻ

Translation:

[Someone] asked: "It not even been ten thousand years from when [the universe] broke into existence until the present. I do not know what things were like before that."

[Zhu Xi] responded: "Before that there must have been another instance [of the universe] like this one. Do you understand?"

[That person] again asked: "Will Heaven and Earth be damaged?"

"They will not be damaged. When, in the future, human beings are totally bereft of the proper way then they will all be crushed together, there will be a period of chaos, and after human beings and other creatures are totally eliminated then they will arise once more."

[That person] asked:"What was the production of the first human being like?"
[Zhu Xi] replied: "It was by means of the transformation of qi (lifebreath). When the jing (seminal essences) of the Two and the Five (i.e., cosmic Yin and Yang and the Five Elements) combine and produce forms, the Buddhists call this 'production by transformation' (i.e., what we in the West call spontaneous generation). There are many creatures in the present that are produced by transformation, such as lice.

Commentary:

Zhu Xi appears to believe in a kind of temporally infinite universe that enjoys life and good order for a time, degenerates into progressively worse conditions, finally reaches total dissolution, and afterwards experiences a rebirth of life and good order, thus starting another cycle.

In this passage, Zhu Xi maintains that Heaven and Earth survive each cataclysm, and only the world that exists between them is reduced to chaos. This observation is significant if Heaven is taken as the sensible manifestation of cosmic Yang, and earth is taken as the sensible manifestation of cosmic Yin.

In the Tai-ji Diagram of Zhou Dun-yi ( Zhou Zi Tai-ji Tu), cosmic Yin and Yang are found immediately beneath the Tai-ji (Great Ultimate), and the so-called Five Elements are found at the next level down. Farther down there is the level of "production by transformation" of the myriad creatures. So the account given by Zhu Xi in this passage is in general agreement with the picture presented to us by Zhou Dun-yi. But Zhu Xi also bring in mention of jing, which further complicates an unclear picture.

The Chinese character for jing is composed of the character for rice, on the left side, and the character qing on the right side. Qing is a color name, and it is used (among other things) to name the color of the clear sky. As a result, it has the almost invariable connotation of purity. So the basic meaning of jing appears to be, "the pure part of the grain," i.e., the kernels of grain minus the hull and chaff. But the character's extended meanings can apply to the purest or finest portions of many things. When the subject is reproduction, jing refers to semen. When one is said, in English, to "be in good spirits," the Chinese language makes mention of a good supply of jing shen, shen being spirit. There actually is a third element in this picture, and that is qi (lifebreath). As I understand it, one's jing stands to qi and to shen as dry ice stands to sublimating clouds of carbon dioxide and to the cold that acts on anything placed within operating range of that low-temperature cloud. So if one has a good supply of seminal essence, then one will be able to evolve ample quantities of lifebreath, and that will give one ample spiritual or psychological energy to act vigorously in the world.

In this passage, Zhu Xi depicts the mixture of various kinds of "seminal essence" (though surely not of a biological sort), and asserts that this process results in the production of things that have visible forms and so appear in our world. It would make much more sense to the modern reader, probably, if their intense sexism had not prevented the Chinese from speaking of the union of seminal essences as at least analogous to the union of male and female reproductive fluids in animal reproduction, and the subsequent appearance of the defined forms of embryos, newborn infants, and so forth.

Zhu Xi apparently believed that these seminal essences could unite in some spontaneous way that did not depend on two animals having intercourse, and he used that belief to account for the reappearance of creatures at the beginning of each new eon, including the reappearance of creatures that would thereafter have to depend on intercourse to replenish their numbers. He probably never saw the eggs of small insects like fleas and lice, and he might not have believed that these eggs could survive a cold winter and a hot summer to hatch in a coat warmed by a human body in November.

-- PEM


Chinese text checked against the Zhu-zi Yu-lei, 18 June 2003.