Baopuzi

Baopu (Pao-p'u; literally:"Simplex"), is a classical allusion to the Tao Te Ching (19): 見素抱樸；少私寡欲。絕學無憂。见素抱朴；少私寡欲。绝学无忧。 Xiàn sù bào pǔ; shǎo sī guǎ yù.

Evince the plainness of undyed silk, embrace the simplicity of the unhewn log; lessen selfishness, diminish desires; abolish learning and you will be without worries.

In my twenties I planned to compose some little things in order not to waste my time, for it seemed best to create something that would constitute the sayings of one sole thinker.

This is when I outlined my philosophical writing, but it was also the moment when I became involved in armed rebellion and found myself wandering and scattered even farther afield, some of my things getting lost.

[9]Compare the more literal translation of Davis and Ch'en, "I left off writing for ten and odd years, for I was constantly on the road, until the era Chien-wu 建武 (317-318 A.D.) when I got it ready.

"[5] Ge's autobiography mentions his military service fighting rebels against the Jin dynasty, and successfully defending his hometown of Jurong (句容), in modern Zhenjiang, Jiangsu.

The Outer Chapters discuss Chinese philosophy, Confucianism, Legalism, government, politics, literature, scholarship, and include Ge's autobiography, which Waley called "the fullest document of this kind that early China produced".

Ge philosophically described Taoism as the ben (本) "root; trunk; origin" and Confucianism as the mo (末) "tip; branch; end".

While the Baopuzi Inner and Outer Chapters differ in content, they share a general format with an unnamed interlocutor posing questions and Ge Hong providing answers.

Joseph Needham, who called Ge Hong "the greatest alchemist in Chinese history", quoted the following passage about medicines from different biological categories.

… If we followed your suggestion and mistrusted things of a different type, we would be obliged to crush flesh and smelt bone to prepare a medicine for wounds, or to fry skin and roast hair to treat baldness.

(3)[19] Needham evaluated this passage, "Admittedly there is much in the Pao Phu Tzu which is wild, fanciful and superstitious, but here we have a discussion scientifically as sound as anything in Aristotle, and very much superior to anything which the contemporary occident could produce.

Tenney L. Davis, professor of organic chemistry at Massachusetts Institute of Technology, collaborated on first translations of the Inner Chapters relevant to the history of alchemy.

Translating the fundamental Taoist word Tao ("way; path; principle") as English God is a conspicuous peculiarity of Ware's Baopuzi version.

Similarly, the reader might be warned that "Genii," as used for rendering the word hsien, does not convey the concept of some supernatural slaves as found in the lamp and the ring of the Thousand-and-One Nights.

Ge Hong wrote the Baopuzi in elegant Classical Chinese grammar and terminology, but some Inner Chapter contexts are difficult to translate.

Second comes gold; third, silver, fourth, excresences; fifth, the jades; sixth, mica; seventh, pearls; eighth, realgar; ninth, brown hematite; tenth, conglomerated brown hematite; eleventh, quartz; twelfth, rock crystal; thirteenth, geodes; fourteenth, sulphur; fifteenth, wild honey; and sixteenth, laminar malachite.

In addition, Sailey included appendices on "Buddhism and the Pao-p'u-tzu", "Biography of Ko Hung" from the Jin Shu, and "Recensions" of lost Baopuzi fragments quoted in later texts.

[43][33] gave a mixed review, "Although Sailey's renderings frequently obscure Ko Hung's carefully polished diction and nuance, they reliably convey the sense of the original and should be a substantial boon to Western students of medieval Chinese thought and culture."

It shows us the art matured by five or six centuries of practice, having its traditional heroes and an extensive literature, its technique and philosophy now clearly fixed, its objectives and pretentions established.

This book is a vast trove of commonplaces and hearsay about popular beliefs in which Ko's few incontestably Taoist texts play an essential but small part.

Ko seeks to convince his questioner, and thereby his readers, that immortality is a proper object of study and is attainable – not only by the ancients but in his own time, not only by a destined few but by anyone with enough faith to undertake arduous and dangerous disciplines.

The devotion that Ko calls for implies wholesale acceptance of legends, myths, tales of prodigies, magical beliefs, religious faiths – practically every belief current in the popular imagination of Ko's time and the inverse in almost every sense of what "fundamentalist Confucian" humanists considered worthy of thought (but then they were no longer setting the intellectual style).

Certainly, one would not now go to Watts in the hope of learning much about Taoism, but a close study of his work would tell us a great deal about perceptions and presuppositions concerning Asian religions in mid-twentieth century America.

Like Watts and others of his generation it is true that Ge Hong did see religion as a personal matter, and he seems to have approached it from the point of view of a fan or enthusiast more than as an initiate.

"[48] For example, histories record that both Qin Shi Huang and Emperor Wu of Han dispatched imperial naval expeditions to obtain the "elixir of immortality" from mythical Mount Penglai.

In the first, in order to differentiate the ideal values of hsien-immortal from this worldly worthies and powers, Ko Hung says, "Those who attained immortal were almost all poor and lowly.

"[49] Ge Hong quotes his teacher Zheng Yin's explanation that poverty forces Tao-shi ("Taoist practitioners") seeking hsien techniques to engage in the difficulties and dangers of alchemy.

This is simpler to produce than traditional jiuding 九鼎 "nine tripods" elixirs (attributed to the Yellow Emperor), but more expensive – eight doses cost 400,000 cash.

"[54] Nonetheless, Pregadio concludes, Ge Hong's testimony deserves attention as a valuable overview of the religious traditions of Jiangnan just before the Way of the Celestial Masters (Tianshi dao) spread to that area, soon followed by the Shangqing and Lingbao revelations.