Table Of ContentRiding the Wind with Liezi
New Perspectives on the Daoist Classic
Edited by Ronnie Littlejohn & Jeffrey Dippmann
Riding the Wind with Liezi
列子
SUNY series in Chinese Philosophy and Culture
Roger T. Ames, editor
Riding the Wind with Liezi
列子
New Perspectives on the Daoist Classic
Edited by
Ronnie Littlejohn
and
Jeffrey Dippmann
Published by State University of New York Press, Albany
©2011 State University of New York
All rights reserved
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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Riding the wind with Liezi : new perspectives on the Daoist classic / edited by
Ronnie Littlejohn and Jeffrey Dippmann.
p. cm. — (SUNY series in Chinese philosophy and culture)
Includes bibliographical references.
ISBN978–1–4384–3455–1 (hardcover : alk. paper) 1. Liezi,4th cent. b.c.Liezi.
I. Littlejohn, Ronnie. II. Dippmann, Jeffrey Walter. III. Title: Riding the wind
with Liezi.
BL1900.L485R532011
299.5'1482––dc22
2010031922
10 9 8 7 6 5 4 32 1
Contents
Acknowledgments vii
Introduction 1
Roger T. Ames
The Liezi Text
Reading the Liezi: The First Thousand Years 15
T. H. Barrett
The Liezi’s Use of the Lost Zhuangzi 31
Ronnie Littlejohn
Is the Liezi an Encheiridion? 51
May Sim
Interpretive Essays
Torches of Chaos and Doubt: Themes of Process 77
and Transformations in the Liezi
John H. Berthrong
The That-Beyond-Which of the Pristine Dao: 101
Cosmogony in the Liezi
Thomas Michael
The Theme of Unselfconsciousness in the Liezi 127
Philip J. Ivanhoe
Reading the Zhuangzi in Liezi: Redefining Xianship 151
Jeffrey Dippmann
v
vi Contents
Applying the Teachings of the Liezi
Body and Identity 167
Livia Kohn
I, Robot: Self as Machine in the Liezi 193
Jeffrey L. Richey
Dancing with Yinyang: The Art of Emergence 209
Robin R. Wang
How To Fish Like a Daoist 225
Erin M. Cline
When Butterflflies Change into Birds: 241
Life and Death in theLiezi
David Jones
Contributors 255
Index 261
Acknowledgments
As co-editors, we would like to express our thanks and deep grati-
tude to each of this volume’s contributors. Without their patience
and enthusiastic support of this project, it would have never seen
fruition. We wish to thank Roger Ames in particular for his stead-
fast encouragement and wise counsel throughout the entire process,
from conception to publication. In addition, we need to express
our appreciation for the community of friends and scholars that
we have come to cherish through the Asian Studies Development
Program, and the Association of Regional Centers. Both organiza-
tions owe their inception to the work of Roger, Peter Hershock,
and Betty Buck, and their members have been stalwart supporters
and in some cases contributors to this anthology.
I want to express my deep gratitude to Jeff Dippmann for his
friendship and deep commitment to our project in this book, and
to the many contributors who allowed us to bring their new work
on Liezi into the ongoing conversation about Daoism. As always,
my thanks and affection goes out to my family and colleagues who
inspire me to follow the Dao.
I would like to personally thank Ronnie Littlejohn for his unwav-
ering friendship and support throughout this process, and can never
fully express my gratitude for all that he did to ensure the success of
this volume. Most importantly, my thanks to my loving wife Cheri,
and children Angela, Brooks, David, and Jennifer, whose unfailing
support, encouragement and advice made this volume possible.
vii
列子
Introduction
Roger T. Ames
The Liezi as a text seems almost as elusive as Liezi the historical
person. The Liezi is associated with perhaps the most mystical of all
the Daoist adepts who surfaces here and there in the philosophical
literature only to ride elsewhere on the winds. What Liezi was
originally as a text we do not know, but as it has been received, it
is a compendium of hyperbolic anecdotes, seemingly paradoxical
aphorisms, and curious parables, an anthology that ranges as far
and as wide as the winds blow, that loses its reader in a wild world
of unfathomable change and indeterminacy, and that quite literally
makes a great deal out of nothing. Like most of the Daoist texts,
the Liezi is normative, recommending a way of being in this world
that presumably enables the willing adept to make the most of the
human experience.
This present volume is a long-overdue collection of seminal
essays on this most curious Liezi, one of the most understudied
texts in the classical Chinese corpus. Rather than being read for
what it is, Liezi has often been disrespected if not dismissed in
the historical scholarship because of what it is not. In sum, then,
this present volume contests this unfortunate situation. It begins
from the recognition that most if not all of the classical Chinese
philosophical texts are suspicious in their origins and as such, are
other than what they purport to be. Setting aside the problem of
“authenticity” as an only marginally relevant question, this set of
essays provides a multidimensional argument for the historical,
literary, and philosophical importance of this document by an
1
Description:TheLieziis the forgotten classic of Daoism. Along with theLaozi (Daodejing)and theZhuangzi, it's been considered a Daoist masterwork since the mid-eighth century, yet unlike those well-read works, theLieziis little known and receives scant scholarly attention. Nevertheless, theLieziis an important t
