Shèshēng yàoyì 攝生要義
Essential Meanings of Regulating Life by 王廷相 Wáng Tíngxiāng (zì Zǐhéng 子衡, hào Jùnchuān 浚川, 1474–1544; Míng Grand Secretary, Minister of War, philosopher of qì-monism) — writing under the sobriquet Hébīn zhàngrén 河濱丈人 (“the Old Man of the Riverbank”). The catalog meta records the author as 河濱丈人 with no dynasty assigned; the catalog dynasty field “南宋” is incorrect — the postface explicitly identifies the author and the work is firmly Míng (see Abstract).
About the work
A ten-piān 篇 (chapter) treatise on yǎngshēng theory and practice, organised around the canonical inner-cultivation programme: 存想 cúnxiǎng (visualisation), 守一 shǒuyī (keeping the One), 行氣 xíngqì (breathing exercises), 導引 dǎoyǐn (gymnastic guidance), 節欲 jiéyù (regulation of desire), 飲食 yǐnshí (diet), 服食 fúshí (drug ingestion), 居處 jūchǔ (habitation), 避忌 bìjì (taboos and avoidances), and a tenth synthetic chapter. The work positions itself self-consciously against two opposed extremes — the alchemical-immortal idiom (“dàngrù xiānquán 蕩入仙筌”) and the merely pharmacological reductionism (“zhuānshǒu fāngěr 專守方餌”) — and articulates a middle-way yǎngshēng grounded in tiáoxí shèxìng, huǎnxíng jiéyù 調息攝性、緩形節欲 (“regulating breath and inwardly nourishing the xìng; loosening the body and regulating desires”).
Prefaces
Two prefaces are transmitted. The principal xù is by the author himself, signing as Hébīn zhàngrén: “the doctrine of yǎngshēng is of remote origin: 神農 Shénnóng tasted the herbs, 黃帝 Xuānyuán established the discourse — secretly opening the zàohuà, virtue extending to the hánlíng… As later ages elaborated the discussion, the higher were swept into the alchemical idiom and the lower fixated on drug-recipes; they did not know that breath-regulation and shèxìng, body-loosening and desire-regulation, were the hidden formula of human reason, the pivot of xìng and mìng. — Since my prime, I have studied these arts somewhat. Following the moved, I reach the form; following the empty, I reach the qì; below I do not cling to skills; above I am not stuck in the immortal — and indeed, regarding the secret of shèshēng, I have something surpassingly attained. I therefore collected and combined the texts, extracted the essence and meaning, and composed ten piān to instruct beginners.” The hòuxù 後序 (afterword) is by 張惟恕 Zhāng Wéishù of Shàngcài 上蔡 (Hénán), identifying the author: “Hébīn zhàngrén — who is this? — Grand Marshal Jùnchuān gōng 浚川公 [i.e., Wáng Tíngxiāng]. His Excellency had his mind on the empire’s affairs, while seeking to elevate it to the realm of benevolence and longevity, to extend the transformation of warm-harmony; this work is the means.”
Abstract
The work was composed by 王廷相 Wáng Tíngxiāng (1474–1544; jìnshì of 1502), one of the most distinguished mid-Míng statesmen and one of the principal philosophical voices of the early-Míng qì-monism (qì xué 氣學) that resisted the 王守仁 Wáng Yángmíng xīn xué. The afterwriter’s title for Wáng — Grand Marshal Dàsīmǎ 大司馬 — corresponds to Minister of War (兵部尚書), the office Wáng held from 1538 until his dismissal in 1542; the work must therefore date to that ministerial period or to the preceding decade of high office. The terminus ante quem is Wáng’s death in 1544.
The work is a major document of the early-Míng qì-monist scholar’s engagement with yǎngshēng: for Wáng, who held in his philosophical writings that the universe was constituted of nothing but qì in its various consolidations, yǎngshēng was philosophically continuous with jīngshì (administration of the realm) — both being the management of qì. The Shèshēng yàoyì should be read alongside Wáng’s 慎言 Shènyán and 雅述 Yǎshù — his major philosophical works — as part of a single intellectual project.
The catalog meta’s “南宋” assignment is incorrect and should be amended: the postface by Zhāng Wéishù unambiguously identifies the author as Wáng Tíngxiāng, who is firmly mid-Míng. The pseudonym Hébīn zhàngrén — “the Old Man of the Riverbank” — alludes to the Lǐjì · Tángōng and the broader Confucian tradition of the riverbank as the locus of recluse-wisdom (Sēnbīn 涑濱 / Hébīn 河濱). The jicheng.tw reprint follows the early-Míng Wànlì recension; an alternative transmission exists in Wáng’s 王氏家藏集 Wángshì jiācáng jí.
Translations and research
- Bing Wang, The Philosophy of Wang Tingxiang (1474–1544) (Ph.D. dissertation, University of California, Berkeley, 1996).
- 王俊彥, 《王廷相與明代氣學》 (Tāi-běi: Xiù-wēi, 2005).
- Wáng Tíngxiāng zhé-xué xuǎn jí 王廷相哲學選集, ed. 王孝魚 (Běijīng: Zhōng-huá shū-jú, 1965; rev. ed. 1989).
- 周一謀, Yǎng-shēng wén-xiàn tōng-kǎo (Shàng-hǎi, 2008).
- DMB (Goodrich and Fang, eds., Dictionary of Ming Biography, 1976), s.v. Wang Ting-hsiang.
Other points of interest
The integration of yǎngshēng into a coherent philosophical position grounded in qì-monism is one of the more remarkable mid-Míng intellectual configurations — Wáng’s text is in this respect unique in the genre, and would deserve more attention than it has received in either the philosophical or the medical-historical literature. Zhāng Wéishù’s identification of the author in the hòuxù — necessary because Wáng had published under a yīnyǎo sobriquet — is in itself a sociologically suggestive moment: a Grand Marshal publishing yǎngshēng under a pseudonym lest his ministerial standing be compromised.