Three Mysteries of Taoist Scriptural Tradition

The opening paragraph of chapter 3 in my book Yiqing the Oracle makes reference to the three major Taoist texts referred to as the Three Mysteries or Sanxuan. The Three Mysteries were canonized as such sometime during the Han dynasty between 200 BC and the 1st century AD. What are the Three Mysteries? One, the Zhouyi or the Yiqing. Two, Laozi's Daozejing. And three, the eponymous Zhuangzi. The objective of this video discussion is to offer a high-level overview of these Three Mysteries and to provide some insight into what's contained within these three books. Let's also discuss why these three texts are instructive on Taoist occult philosophy. But first, a really quick poll of the audience. Before watching this video, which of these three texts, the Yiqing, Daozejing, Zhuangzi, were familiar to you and which ones have you read? Share in the comments section and also your impressions of what you had read. Xuanxue means the study of metaphysics, with the word Xuan getting translated to metaphysics but also mysteries, the occult. Xuanxue was a school of thought that emerged during the Wei and Jin dynasties around 200 and 400 AD. Xuanxue sought to bridge the gap between natural sciences and religion, objective knowledge, and subjective experience. According to this mystery school of thought, to understand the mysteries or metaphysics, you must study the Yiqing, the Daozejing, and the Zhuangzi. You use the Daozejing and the Zhuangzi to annotate and better understand the otherwise difficult to understand Yiqing. Why do I speak Chinese when I say Zhuangzi but then speak English when I say Yiqing? Why? For context, recall this word Xuan here meaning school of mysteries or alternatively referencing the study of metaphysics. This is the same word from the Mysterious Lady of the Nine Heavens, Jiu Tian Xuan Ni, which we covered in a video about the goddess. And this is the Xuan from Tai Xuan Jing, the Book of Supreme Mysteries, which we also covered in a previous video, a book quite similar to the Yiqing, dated to the Western Han Dynasty, 2 BC. Within the school of mysteries, which focuses on the study of metaphysics and the occult, the three seminal texts are the Three Mysteries, which is the topic of this video. Returning to the Mysterious Lady of the Nine Heavens or Ninth Heaven, let's flag a text we will be talking about in a future video, Xuan Ni Bing Fa, the Lady of the Ninth Heavens Art of War, a text dated to the Tang Dynasty between 557 and 641 AD. So stay tuned. Now let's talk a bit about the Three Mysteries. The first in time and considered the most important in the study of metaphysics is the Yiqing, attributed to King Wen and the Duke of Zhou sometime around 1046 BC. So what is the Yiqing? Well, it's 64 six-line hexagrams formed from the eight trigrams accompanied by obscure line texts that often read like riddles. Sometimes they're making reference to historical or legendary events from the Shang and Zhou dynasties, sometimes making reference to astrology or astronomy, a lot of virtue signaling on what the sage or junzi would or would not do, and passages that can be inferred to be prophetic or divinatory, like auspicious to proceed or not auspicious to proceed. Beyond that, who knows what the Yiqing is about? It's a mystery. Second of the Three Mysteries is the Daodejing, attributed to Laozi or Master Lao around 500 BC. Laozi and Confucius purportedly lived around the same time, and there are all these legends of them in deep, profound conversation with each other, but who knows, right? At least for timeline purposes, yes, Confucian ethics and the influence of Confucian scholars over the Yiqing coincided with the Laozi School of Philosophy and the Daodejing. What is the Daodejing? Well, it's 81 scrolls written in about 5,000 characters, consisting of seemingly contradictory aphorisms, a lot like the visual of the yin-yang symbol. Much of the statement structure of the Daodejing is in oppositions, so it'll take two things in opposition, juxtapose them together, and say that the two polarities are in harmony. In that sense, the Daodejing is a series of contradictions or paradoxes presented in an effort to show or reveal to you your own values. So you could say that it uses propositional logic in the form of contradictions to reveal the Dao. What is heavy is lightness, but heaviness is not lightness. The path that is bright looks dark. The path that is progressive looks regressive. One who displays shine does not himself shine. He who glorifies himself has no glory. He who tries too hard to pursue the Dao is not in truth pursuing the Dao. To truly gain, you must renounce. If the Yiqing is a scriptural text for receiving prophetic messages on heaven's mandate, then the Daodejing is a scriptural text for how to live a life in harmony with the Dao. To try and summarize the core value of Daoism as espoused by Laozi, I would say to be like water, to be of benefit effortlessly, and to not be afraid of going into the abyss. Be like water. Two, if you want the world, then you have to serve the world selflessly. Whatever it is you want to attain, you have to service that thing selflessly. Basically, if you want to lead and assert control over something, then to assert that control over something, you must submit to it. Best statecraft example of that is a Daoist perspective of statecraft is that a king or emperor must be in service and in submission to the people because that king or leader wants to rule over and control the people. And the third core value you derive from the Daodejing would be love creates, fear destroys. The third and final of the three mysteries is the eponymously titled Zhuangzi, which accounts the various teachings of the philosopher Zhuangzi, or Master Zhuang, dated between 350 BC and 250 BC. The Zhuangzi is a collection of narrative and expository essays subdivided into three pian, nei pian, wai pian, za pian. Nei pian, meaning inner scrolls or chapters, is a collection of seven essays. Wai pian, meaning outer scrolls, is a collection of 15 essays. And the third, za pian, meaning miscellaneous or addendum scrolls, is a series of 11 chapters. The text is typically structured as a conversation that Zhuangzi is having with someone, a dialectic or dialogue to contrast Zhuangzi's point of view with somebody else's. In one of the za pian, addendum scrolls, Zhuangzi is having a conversation with the philosopher Huizi, Master Hui. They are taking a walk along a river and they see fish swimming in that river. Zhuangzi sees the fish and he says to Huizi, the fish look so happy. Huizi says back, you're not fish. How do you know that the fish are happy? Zhuangzi replies, you are not me. How do you know what I know about the happiness of fish? Huizi, trying to be a good mediator, concedes that you're right. I'm not you, so I don't know what you truly know. But I'm also right because you are not fish, so you don't know what truly makes fish happy. Zhuangzi, not to be outdone, has to have the last word. He says back, when you ask me how do I know that the fish are happy, you are already implying in that question that you know that I know that fish are happy. You're asking how do I know, which is kind of a cheap shot if you ask me. Because Zhuangzi is basically just quibbling over semantics. So that's the Zhuangzi, a series of stories or parables that will make your brain melt if you think too long and hard on them, but purportedly reveal some greater truth about life. Here's another example from Zhuangzi. A disciple asks Master Zhuang, so the trees in the mountain live for a very, very long time, and they consist of wood, mu. Mu, wood, being one of the five changing phases of wuxing. Geese, observes this disciple, seem to die off far more quickly than trees, and they lack wood, mu. So if trees are made of wood and last a very long time, and geese are not made of wood and do not last a very long time, is wood the cause of longevity? Zhuangzi smiles and says back, the Duke of Zou, he's now referring to the I Ching when he says that, provided wood in this hexagram over here, and then provided wood in this hexagram over there. So what he's saying is wood being the wuxing, one of the five alchemical changing phases in Chinese cosmology, generates two of the trigrams, and those two trigrams generate hexagrams of the I Ching. And the varying hexagrams that the fundamental wood can generate are very different. Says Master Zhuang to his disciple, wood is constantly changing. Like, how is that an answer, Master Zhuang? The lawyer in me wants to say, objection, witness is being non-responsive. Oh, but Zhuangzi is not done. He goes on to say, again, answering that question about wood, geese, and trees, unity leads to discord, success leads to destruction, integrity leads to corruption. My dear disciple, that is the great truth of the Tao, and that Tao is the Tao, or the path of virtue. Just a reminder, the question asked was about causal relation. Trees are made of wood, they last a long time. Geese are not made of wood, they do not last a long time. Is it because wood causes things to last a long time? That was the question, and then Zhuangzi went off on that crazy answer. In Zhuangzi's crazy rambling answer to that question, though, he uses the reference, first remember, to the Duke of Zhou, so to the I Ching hexagrams, and then to Tao De, meaning Tao De Jing. So in his response, implied within, he's making references to the two other mysteries, but he's not referring to the two other mysteries. It's a play on words. And I'm going to take a stab at what I think he's trying to say here. In presenting the question, the disciple is doing or demonstrating something that humans are prone to doing, which is a logical fallacy. We are drawing, and we are prone to drawing, a cause and effect relationship to things based on very superficial and limited observations. And we, as humans, do this all of the time. The disciple's example sounds silly, but then that's basically what we do all of the time without realizing how silly we are being. And in his response, the reason Zhuangzi makes reference to the I Ching hexagrams, the phases of change, he's saying that the causes are so innumerable and multivariate and nuanced, there's no way through the limited perspective of a human we would be able to identify the true source of cause and effect. Zhuangzi launches into that long-winded explanation of unity leads to discord, success leads to destruction, integrity leads to corruption, to demonstrate how we really can't understand cause and effect. And to know what you don't know is the virtuous path of the Tao. So I guess in a way, Zhuangzi's response was responsive, because he's saying, hey, the causal relationship is way deeper than you realize, dumbass. If you had to summarize the collective body of essays, you might say that the Zhuangzi is about relativity. Case in point, the most famous parable, Zhuangzi dreams that he is a butterfly and then awakens wondering if he's a human who just had a dream about being a butterfly, or is he a butterfly now having a dream that he is human? And he's saying that in the moment, right now, from his he really can't say for sure which is which, philosophical relativity. So the I Ching is a tool for receiving divinatory insight into the will of heaven, the mandate of heaven. The Tao Te Ching is scripture for how to live in harmony with the Tao. The Zhuangzi, then, is a collection of fun stories, because they are intended to be fun and entertaining. And through fun fictional stories, reveal to you core truths hidden in plain sight. Linji Yixuan is a Chan Buddhist master during the Tang dynasty who came up with this concept, or at least he is credited with the concept of three mysteries, three essentials, Sanxuan, Sanyao, which became integrated into Chan Buddhist philosophy. How do we explain the principles of the three mysteries, three essentials? This pictorial demonstration of three mysteries, three essentials makes sense to me, and I'm really hoping it adequately communicates to you its principle. The three mysteries are the I Ching, represented on screen by Yi, the Tao Te Ching, represented by Tao, and the Zhuangzi, represented by ZH. The three blocks come together to form the foundation of one. These three blocks are subdivided into an inner trinity, which we can express as Jing, the nutritive force that feeds the body, the heart-mind, which is your intellect and your emotions, and Shen, which is connectivity or attunement to the divine, spiritual value. Implied within each of these three separate books, I Ching, Tao Te Ching, and the Zhuangzi are each other, meaning, for example, you study the I Ching first through a textual reading of it, self-contained within the four corners of the text, but you also need to, at least according to this triplicity principle, study the Yi by annotating it with the Tao Te Ching and with the Zhuangzi. Housed within the I Ching are the Tao Te Ching and the Zhuangzi, even though the subsequent two texts come later in time. Each text, let's take the I Ching, can be interpreted for a practical value. Each work holds an intellectual and emotional value, and each of these three texts are instructive on the divine mysteries. Here's another revelation from the three-by-three, three mysteries, three essentials. To understand the body of the Tao, we look to the Zhuangzi. To understand the mind of the Tao, we look to the Tao Te Ching. And to understand the spirit of the Tao, we look to the I Ching. Is this cubic expression of the Tao related to the Luo Shu Magic Square? I don't know. You tell me. There is unequivocally an occult or hidden meaning to each of these three books, and one approach to an occult reading of the three texts is to look for appearances of that word Xuan as signposts. Where does the word Xuan appear in the I Ching, Tao Te Ching, and Zhuangzi, and in what context? What occult meaning is hidden in plain sight within that context, which we are directed to by the signpost Xuan? Too much? Were the gongs too much? One reference to Xuan in the I Ching is found in Hexagram 2, which Hino is about as Xuan, or quote, dark, end quote, as it gets. Am I right? In this context, Xuan describes a dark color, the color of a midnight sky, indigo-ish. But this word here also implies mysterious. As for the Tao Te Ching, the word Xuan appears in 7 of the 81 verses. And on screen, I'm going to show you where. As a fun homework assignment, look up these verses. Xuan appears three times in verse 1, twice in verse 6, twice more in verse 10, and once in verse 15. Read these selected passages from your copy of the Tao Te Ching. Continuing on, verses 51, 56, and 65. In total, Xuan appears 12 times out of the 5,000 characters of the Tao Te Ching, spread across 7 of the 81 verses. I don't think the numerology of those numbers is insignificant. Oh, and as it turns out, the word Xuan also appears a total of 12 times in the Zhuangzi, the same number of times it appears in the Tao Te Ching, contained in a total of 11 verses. That's not for nothing, am I right? The stories in which Xuan appears are also worth noting. Like the one that is an account of Xi Wangmu, the Queen Mother of the West, the passage you see on screen is from the Inner Scrolls in the chapter titled The Great Master Teacher, 大宗师. It's about, in short summary, how a master teacher can transmit the Tao to a student. But just because the master teacher transmits to the student, it doesn't mean that the Tao is received by that student. The text is about how mastery of the Tao is not something you can prove to somebody else. I can't prove to you I've mastered, I haven't, but I'm just saying, I cannot prove to you I've mastered the Tao. Mastery of the Tao is only something you can know for yourself and experience from within. The text goes on to talk about how from that mysterious void came the gods who then created heaven and earth. Then that passage lists out various recipients of the Tao, like Fuxi, the Sun and the Moon, Wuding, the 22nd Shang Dynasty Emperor circa 1200 BC, who was referenced in the I Ching, by the way, and Xi Wangmu, the Queen Mother. So, revealing the mystery of this chapter of Zhuangzi, meaning an occult reading of the text, this passage is instructive on how power and knowledge can be transmitted from master to disciple. It's pointing out that a student needs to be in a state of readiness to receive at the same time that the master teacher transfers the Tao to the student. A master teacher cannot impart anything upon the student that the student is not ready to receive. And a master teacher doesn't have to be a human, it can be an ascended master, like one of the named figures in that whole passage, including Xi Wangmu, the Queen Mother. So the Queen Mother as an ascended master can be in the figure of a master teacher who transmits the Tao to a student ready to receive it. And that's the three mysteries of the Taoist scriptural tradition.