Su Shi’s Greatest Works In His Own View

INTRODUCTION

Culturally, the Song period was one of the great ages of Chinese history. It was strikingly modern in character. By Song times the Chinese had gotten up off the floor and were sitting on chairs, contraptions that came in from the west with Buddhism and spread slowly through out Chinese society; they were reading printed books, drinking tea, carrying on at least part of their monetary transactions with paper money, and experimenting with explosive weapons. Many of them lived in large cities – the main Song capital, Kaifeng, was almost certainly the largest city in the world at the time – and traveled freely about the empire by boat, horse, carriage, or palanquin over an elaborate system of roads and water ways. In their way of life, their values, and their interests, the Song people were in many respects far closer to modern Western life than European men and women of the same period.

This perhaps explains why so much of their literature reads like the product of our own time. Poetry and prose, was regarded as a part of everyday life, a normal medium for expressing thoughts and feelings. The work of Su Shi, the greatest of the Song poets, more commonly know by his literary name, Su Dongpo, well illustrates these qualities. He was born in 1037 in Meishan, a town situated at the foot of Mount Omei in present-day Sichuan province. His grandfather was illiterate, and his father, Su Xun, did not begin serious literary studies until he was in his late twenties, though his father’s older brother passed the civil service examination and became an official. His mother was from a prominent family, an educated woman and a devout Buddhist, and undoubtedly had a great influence upon her son’s development. He had only one brother, Su Che, three years younger than himself.

Su Shi and his brother were educated by their parents and at a private school in the neighborhood run by a Taoist priest, and by 1056 they felt confident enough to go to Kaifeng to take the government civil service examinations. Their father had taken them earlier and failed, but he accompanied his sons to the capital. The boys passed the first examination with distinction, and in the following year passed the second, receiving the Qinshi degree. At the same time Su Xun won private recognition of his literary ability from prominent scholars in the capital. Upon the death of their mother in 1057, the sons returned with their father to Sichuan to observe the customary three year mourning period. The three journeyed to the capital again in 1060, where Su Xun received an official appointment and his sons, after passing the special examinations the following year, were assigned to posts in the provinces. Thus the so-called Three Sus, father and sons, were launched on the careers that would make their names famous in Chinese literary and political history. Following is a table showing major events in Su Shi’s life.

Table 1 Major Events in Su Shi’s Life

SU SHI’S GREATEST WORKS IN HIS OWN VIEW

In his two periods of exile (1080-1084 and 1094-1100), Su Shi wrote prolifically. The fact that writing was what had sent him into both exiles occasioned a certain amount of caution and no end of claims in statements to friends that he had given up the dangerous pursuit; but, in fact, the sheer volume of what Su Shi produced during these years of confinement probably surpasses his output for any other comparable span of his life.

One of the types of writing he turned to in these exiles was commentaries on the Confucian classics. By the end of this second banishment, Su had complete three lengthy commentaries: on the Book of Changes, the Book of Documents, and the Confucian Analects. However, THESE COMMENTARIES HAVE NEVER ATTARACTED MUCH ATTENTION. They have always been considered MINOR works in the rich collection of Su Shi’s works. In fact, one of them (the commentary of the Analects) was lost sometime during the Southern Song. The commentaries, moreover, have always been looked up as a minor component of Su Shi’s works. Su is remembered as a poet and also as a statesman, governor, and artist. No one thinks of him first as a classicist.

The irony of this is that sometimes, though certainly not all the time, Su Shi himself felt that his commentaries were his GREATEST ACHIEVEMENT. In the final year of his life, for example, he confided to a relative that it was his commentaries (not his other writings) that made him think that his life had not been completely wasted. A late entry from his autobiographical jottings yields a similar impression. At the end of his banishment to the island of Hainan, when Su and his son, Guo, were making the sea voyage back to the mainland, the ocean became rough and Su sat up late into the night. It suddenly occurred to him that the manuscripts of his three commentaries were packed in his bags on board the boat. Since there were no copies deposited elsewhere, if calamity should be fall the boat, his interpretations of the classics would be lost to the world. The though was too horrible to contemplate alone, and Su tried in vain to awake his snoring son to share his distress. But then Su realized that these circumstances actually ensured a safe ocean crossing: Heaven would not be so cruel as to arrange otherwise.

For centuries scholars who sought to leave their mark had done so through commentaries on the classics. Reinterpreting the ancient canon was, and would remain, a primary method of presenting new modes of thought. Like many commentators, moreover, Su Shi in his journey back into these ancients texts was not just engaged in a scholarly enterprise unrelated to the controversies of the day.

A number of themes in both of Su’s commentaries (the Book of Changes and the Book of Documents) reflect quite plainly and unambiguously his continuing dispute with the New Policies (New Law Party). This antagonism is especially obvious in Su’s work on the Book of Documents, whose focus on ancient political history lent itself to expressions of Su’s dissenting views on statecraft. As Su the commentator worked his way through this classic, he took advantage of the many opportunities, its momentous speeches and historical narratives provided to iterate his positions on key issues of governance, such as reliance upon men rather regulations, the importance of minimizing punishments (especially the death penalty), the respect that the ruler should have towards his people, and the crucial role that advisors should be given in policy formation.

Seville of Su’s comments on passages in the Documents allude with surprisingly specificity to the controversies of his day. A passing reference to the way land was distributed among the feudal lords by King Wu is seized upon by Su and used to challenge a divergent account of enfeoffment in the Rites of the Zhou. Su develops his commentary at this point into an attack upon the credibility of the text in the Rites generally, and upon those scholars in recent years” who have sought to replicate the governmental structure it describes. This is a transparent criticism of the reform movement and its heavy reliance upon the Rites. Similarly, Su explains how “recent scholars” have misconstrued the words of the marquis of Yin, who in an exhortation to battle declared to his men that awesome sternness must prevail over compassion if affairs were to be satisfactorily concluded. The words were appropriate on the eve of battle, Su points out; but they were not intended to serve as a general principle of governance, though they have in recent times often been adduced to justify harsh rule.

The Book of Changes is less singularly focused upon issues of statecraft. Still, Su takes advantage of those passages that do bear on such matters on convey his political philosophy. The mention, for example, of the phrase “managing wealth” (li cai) in “The Great Appendix” causes him to launch into a lecture that reflects his lingering hostility to the reforms, even though he does not refer specifically to them. The topic of “managing wealth” was, after all, on of Wang Anshi’s (Sushi’s political rival) favorite themes. It is indeed the ruler’s duty, Su asserts, to regulate the nation’s wealth, and he should ensure that it circulates everywhere and is never blocked up. The great danger, however, is that instead of managing the country’s wealth the ruler may actually appropriate it. If he does this, he will lose the trust of the people and his laws will become unenforceable. Like many of the Conservatives, Su Shi seems always to have considered Wang’s stated economic goals duplicitous. Wang’s “management” was really designed all along to concentrate wealth in the hands of the imperial Court. And the consequences Su here describes are precisely those that he believed he had witnessed whenever the reforms were in place.

Su’s commentary of the Changes also stresses the obligations of the ruler to his subjects. A ruler must not force his people to do anything against their wishes. In Su’s formulation, the people virtually determine the direction the nation will go. But the ruler is still essential; his role may in one sense by reactive – he responds to the desire of his subjects – but his subjects still need him as a center to rally around. Su Shi also expects the ruler to have a large capacity for self-denial, and a correspondingly strong commitment to improving the lot of his people. “The ruler looks upon his people as himself.” This is significantly different from the old Mencian notion of ruler as “father and mother” to the people. So sensitive is Su to the issue of abuse of power that when he comes to the sun hexagram (the symbol of lessening) and the tuan explanation that “the lower is diminished and the upper increased” (processes that are said to portend good), Su turns the rest on its head, even though it is not at all certain that the original is meant to have political implications. First Su explains that there is really no such thing as diminution with increase. This particular hexagram just names one aspect of the dual process. But in case there are readers who might still suspect that the classic here implicitly sanctions exploitation of the commoners by the ruling class, Su observes: “The superior man strives to understand what is distant and grand. To him, diminishing those below to increase himself is to diminish himself, while diminishing himself to increase those below is to increase himself.”

THE WAY AND HUMAN NATURE

The Confucian classics also provided Su Shi with an Opportunity to reexamine his understanding of key philosophical concepts and the relationships between them. It was particularly the Book of Changes and its appendices that encouraged his undertaking, because the Documents seldom allowed Su to take leave of pragmatic issues of statecraft.

One of the ancient “Ten Wings” of the Changes, the “Treatise of Remarks on Trigrams,” refers in passing to the classic’s ability to help acquire two kinds of knowledge: it allows us to overtake that which proceeds away from us, and to work our way back to the origins of that which proceeds toward us. Su Shi applies the idea to the sage: proceeding “upstream,” he gradually gains insight into human nature and Heaven’s decree. Then, enlightened by this knowledge, he goes in the opposite direction “downstream” to oversee and regulate all the myriad variations in human behavior and talent that spring from our quintessential nature. What is striking is the emphasis Su places on the starting point for these great quests: “The superior man prizes an understanding of human nature and Heaven’s decree. Wanting to arrive at this, he knows that he must begin from what comes naturally (qi suo yi ran zhe) and proceed upstream to its origin. Now the reason we eat is that we are hungry, and the reason we drink is that we are thirsty. The causes certainly are not external ones. People are able to eat and drink without studying how to do so. That they are naturally able is clear.” This is reminiscent of Su’s old assertion that the li (rites) have their origin on our natural inclinations. It is characteristics of Su to insist that any approach to the higher truths be rooted in, and accommodate, such unstudied behavior.

This entry in Su’s commentary is amplified by another on the “Great Appendix.” The classic simply says, “The alternation of yin and yang constitutes the Way. The extension of them is goodness, and their culmination is human nature.” The passage raised two problems for Su Shi. First, it implies that the Way is knowledgeable and describable: it turns out to be nothing more than the workings of yin and yang. Second, the passage posits much too close a link between the Way, goodness, and human nature for Su to be comfortable with or pass over it without comment. He reacts with this entry:

The sage knew that the Way is difficult to describe, and so he borrowed the concept of yin and yang to describe it, saying “the alternation of yin and yang constitutes the Way.” The phrase “alternation of yin and yang” refers to the stage before yin and yang have mingled and before material things have been generated. It is meant to illustrate a semblance of the Way and to make it less unfathomable. When yin and yang do mingle and generate things, the first one they generate is water. Water is at the juncture of existence and non-existence. It is what is present just as you leave non-existence and non-existence. It is what is present just as you leave non-existence and enter into existence. Laozi understood this. That is why he said, “The highest goodness is like water” and “Water is closest to the Way.” As for the virtue of the sage, although it can be named and described, it is not fixed in any single thing, just like water which does not have any constant form. This is the highest kind of goodness and the closest to the Way. Yet it is not the Way. Now, before water is generated, when the yin and yang have not yet mingled, there is a vast emptiness which contains no thing. But you cannot say there is nothing. This is truly the resemblance of the Way.

Thereafter, yin and yang mingle and generate things, and then the Way comes into contact with things and generates goodness. Once thins are generated, the yin and yang are hidden; and once goodness is established, the Way cannot be seen. That is why the classic says, “The extension of them is goodness, and their culmination is human nature.” People who are humane see the Way and say it is humanness, and people who are wise see the Way and say it is wisdom. Humanness and wisdom are what the sage calls goodness. Goodness is the extension of the Way, but to label it the Way itself is not right.

It is not difficult to see where this is leading. Su goes on take issue with Mencian pronouncement equating human nature with goodness. Why is Su Shi so obsessed with this famous opinion? One is reason is that he sees it as a great impediment to learning. “It says ‘The extension of them is goodness.’ If one who would study the Way starts from its extension, then the Way [he learns] will never be complete.”

According to Su Shi, goodness, as conventionally understood, is too fixed and abstract; and it is also incomplete. His digression about water above must be inspired by the first of these objections. It is only the highest kind of goodness that has no fixed form or manifestation. Lesser kinds are rigid. Indeed, they tend to be heavily prescriptive and therefore removed from immediate experience and impulse. And even the highest goodness is not as formless as the Way itself. Goodness is an effect or result of the dynamics of the Way, but it is only one result. Can eating when hungry be considered an example of goodness? And Su Shi will not accept a conception of the Way that is not broad enough to include such essential behavior as eating.

INVOLVEMENT

The Book of Changes also gave Su Shi the opportunity to stress the importance of interaction or involvement in the human sphere. He reads the classic’s descriptions of dynamic alternation between active (yang) and inactive (yin) phenomena in the cosmos or the Trigrams and, extrapolating from them, affirms that the superior man will never permit himself to be solitary or aloof from the world in which he lives. This is probably the MOST ORIGINAL ASPECT of Su’s interpretation of the classic.

Water is the most yin [of the phases] but it must await the One of Heaven to press upon it before it is generated. If its yin does not obtain a yang, there will be nothing to steam it and bring it to formation. Fire is the most yang [of the phases] but it must await the Two of the Earth to press upon it before it is generated. If its yang does not obtain a yin, then with nothing for it to adhere to, it will never be manifest. All five phases behave similarly. All of them are generated by the pressing of yin and yang against each other. Yang pressing against yin generates water, wood, and earth. Yin pressing against yang generates fire and metal. If there is no pressing of one against the other, then although the resources of yin and yang may be present, the utility of the five phases will go unrealized. The Changes operates the same way. A man is endowed with a particular kind of “raw material” (cai), but at first it is just an unformed and uncarved mass and is not shaped in to any useful implement. The Changes, opening it up, brings it to formation, and only then can the material be utilized. Everyone in the world cultivates his own technique of the Way, each believing that he has achieved perfection. But actually each person remains separated, self-contained, and fixed, not partaking of the common middle. Only after the Changes covers him with its doctrines can he progress in the world. There the qian trigram is unyielding but never broken, while the kun trigram is yielding but never subjugated. The eight Trigrams each have fully realized power yet none is ever permanently weakened. Were this not so, all things in the world would be wasted material, and all approaches to the Way would be wasted techniques.

Su likens a person’s innate “material” (cai) to the five phases. The similarity Su has in mind is that just as each of the phases results (and realizes its utility) from a meeting of yin and yang forces, so, too, a person’s “material,” to be useful, must be acted upon by the teachings of the Changes to be fully realized and useful. This is more than just a plug for the importance of the classic. The hexagrams, after all, are thought to symbolize dynamic configurations of opposing forces. This must be the aspect of the Changes Su Shi has in mind here, now with a human and social application. “Material” that is kept separate and aloof from opposing forces is not described in positive terms as being self-sufficient or uncontaminated. Instead, its aloofness guarantees that its full potential and usefulness will go unrealized.

SELFLESSNESS

The theme of interaction is supplemented in Su’s commentary on the Change by ideas on the self. Primary among them is the doctrine of wuxin (“no-mind”), which describes a type of selfhood that is especially suited to the thoroughgoing involvement with the world that Su demands. Water is a prominent image in this notion, too; but here it is a metaphor for the ideal self rather than for the object of the sage’s knowledge.

Explaining the kan hexagram (the symbol of sinking), the classic observes that water flowing through a defile does not lose its integrity or trustworthiness (xin). This a perfect opportunity for Su, and he comments:

The myriad things all have a constant shape; only water does not. Water shapes itself in accordance with the things it meets. The world holds that things that have a constant shape are trustworthy, while those that do not are untrustworthy. But something that is square may be chiseled into a circle, and something that is crooked may be straightened into a line. So it is that something with a constant shape cannot be relied upon as trustworthy. Now, water may have no constant shape, but the fact that it takes its shape from other things is something we all know in advance. That is why the carpenter uses it as a level, and why the superior man models himself upon it. Because it has no constant shape, it can come into contact with things but suffer no harm. And because nothing harms it, it can flow through a defile and not lose its trustworthiness. From this point of view, nothing in all the world is as trustworthy as water.

Several of the ideas in this passage may be traced back ultimately to Laozi or to early descriptions of Taoist thought. Su’s contribution is to introduce an unconventional conception of “trustworthiness,” making a virtue of the inconstancy of water’s form.

When describing the self, Su Shi is more apt, as above, to speak of what it should lack rather than what it should possess. The trait analogous to water’s lack of constant shape is the individual’s lack of xin (“mind/heart”). The simplest sense of what Su means by no-mind is that the individual should have no selfish motives in his dealings with others. The phrase wusi (“to be free of selfishness”) occurs in both Su’s commentary on the Changes and the Documents. Such absence of selfishness is regularly associated with the ideal of gaining insight in to the Pattern (li) of things. It is only the person who maintains no-mind who can attach such insight, presumably because it is only such a person who is clear-sighted enough to perceive the ultimate nature of the world. Another way of putting it is that only a person who has emptied himself of intent will have room to contain the Patterns of the world. A sampling of representative passages follows:

How could the compliance of the superior man be anything but this: he conforms to Pattern and has no selfishness… The superior man has no intent in acting as he does. He conforms to Pattern and has no selfishness.

He who rides upon the perfect compliance of the world and proceeds in the direction of the people’s delight is bound to be he who has no-mind. “The boat is empty” refers to his having no-mind.

In another passage Su introduces different terminology, shen (“body, self”) and shen (“daimon”), but the reader quickly perceives that the issue he is addressing and his position on it remain essentially the same: “The xian hexagram (the symbol of mutual influence) shows intermingling of daimons. He who would attain the daimonic must abandon his mind. How much the more must he so treat his body! When the body is forgotten, the daimon will be forgotten. Daimon and body cannot both be preserved. On or the other must be forgotten.” Su is imagining a transcendent, spiritual mingling of the daimon in the self with the daimons above (and perhaps those of other people as well). But he insists that this ideal can never be attained if the individual does not first free himself from all consciousness of mind and body.

This raises the question of what is left to give identity and integrity to the self after it has been purged of mind and interest. Su rarely addresses the matter head-on. He speaks of the person’s need to have that which he “maintains within himself” (shou yu zhong) to prevent him from being intimidated by external things. But what is it that he preserves in himself?

One entry in the commentary on the Documents touches upon this issue. Su’s statement is inspired by Yi Yin’s injunction that the sage should have a oneness (of purpose or virtue). Su is disquieted by this and feels impelled to explain that the classic is not saying that conduct should be fixed and unchanging. He continues:

To have a ruler within (zhong you zhu) is what is meant by oneness. If there is a ruler within, the person responds appropriately as things confront him. And if a person thus responds, he is renewed daily. However, if there is no ruler within, external things take control. [In that case] pleasure, anger, sorrow, and joy will all reside with the things, and what will renew him? That is why Yi Yin said, “From start to finish he is one, and thus he is renewed daily.” I have said that the sage is like Heaven, which takes life and gives it at the proper time. The superior man is like water which takes its shape according to whatever thing it encounters. Heaven never acts contrary to humanness, and water never loses its property of being level. Because they are one, they are renewed daily.

This is reminiscent of Su’s statement in his commentary on the Changes that the sage is not aloof from things; he proceeds with them into the realms of good and bad fortune and yet is never disoriented by them. It must be something like “the ruler within” that allows him to keep his proper orientation. Nevertheless, Su has still not elaborated upon the nature of this inner guidance. He simply talks about the effects of its presence or absence.

Drawing on another passage from the Documents, Su develops two contrasting terms, “mind of man” (renxin) and “mind of the Way” (daoxin), to account more satisfactorily for, first the source of inner constancy; second, the relations between such constancy and the emotions; and, third, for the relations between the emotions and conduct. The “mind of man” is common mind, which is prey to unchecked emotions and, thus, to immoral conduct. The “mind of the Way,” however, is the “original mind” (benxin). This is clearly an innate moral consciousness, which, however, must be nurtured if it is not to be overcome by the base “mind of man.” Here, for once, Su recognizes a moral consciousness that is independent of the emotions. Indeed the “original mind” is antecedent to the experience of emotions. Quoting the Doctrine of the Mean, Su allows that before the emotions arise, this original mind is in a state of harmony. Thereafter, if this mind remains in control, the experience of emotions is positive and leads to virtuous conduct. But if the “mind of man” is allowed to take control, then the same emotions result in selfish and wanton conduct.

There had always been a potential contradiction between Su’s early affirmation of the centrality of the emotions and his later distrust of the self-centered mind and its proclivity for selfish conduct. In his remarks on the two “minds,” we witness Su backing away from his early faith in the inherent goodness of the emotions. This doctrine of the two minds allow Su to explain how the emotions may figure in immoral as well as moral conduct, depending upon the quality of the mind in which they arise. This is a significant refinement of his earlier views, and one informed by a more skeptical view of natural human inclinations.

Su Shi’s remarks on the self and its relation with the world seem unbalanced. He concentrates on the dynamics of the self’s contact with the external world. He gives abundant attention to the goal of overcoming narrow self-centeredness, and never tires of describing the supreme adaptability and sensitivity that result. This unevenness in his treatment surely sprang from his place in the political and intellectual controversies of the day. There is a brief but revealing passage early in Su’s commentary on the Changes. Explaining the first line of the li hexagram (the symbol of treading), the classic says that it shows “its subject treading his accustomed path. If he goes forward there will be no error.” The xiang portion of the text further expands on the auspicious image: “Singly he carries out his long-cherished wishes.” This may sound innocuous enough; but it strikes a nerve in Su Shi, who writes, “The reason that the Way of the superior man has many transformations and is not constant is that dissimilar things keep appearing before him. If he did not have contact with things, the superior man would only be carrying out his own wishes.” It is because Su believed that he lived in a world in which certain men had been allowed to carry out their wishes and remain aloof from the disastrous consequences that he insisted on the alternative vision of enlightened conduct and gave scant attention to the make-up of the self in isolation.

CONCLUSION

Despite the fact that Su Shi was a distinguished poet, prose writer, painter, and calligrapher, he was also a philosopher. His philosophy represents a combination of Confucian and Buddhist ideas, with a large mixture of philosophical Taoism. His greatest works – three lengthy commentaries on Confucian classics, were the uttermost representation of ideas. We should remember him, not only because of his great poetry, prose, but also his great philosophical ideas.

WORKS CITED

Bol, Peter K. Su Shih and Culture, Sung Dynasty Uses of the I Ching, Cambridge Press, 1983

Fan, Kong. Su Shi Piling yichuan de zhexue sixiang, Zhongguo zhexue, Vol. 9, 1983.

Wang, Yu. Su Shi de zhexue yu zongjiao, Tang Song shi yangjiu, ed. Lin Tienwai and Joseph Wong, National University Press, Taiwan, 1977.

Zeng, Zaozhuang. Cong Piling Yizhuan kan Su Shi de shijie guan, Su Shi yanjiu zhuanji, Shanghai People’s Press, 1986.