In their commentaries to the Laozi, Wang Bi and Xiang’er take radically different approaches to the text. Between the two of them, they are liable to upset anyone who wants to get at the original meaning of the text, since they contradict each other at every turn. Westerners are keen to favor the more philosophical understanding of Wang Bi, which appears to take fewer liberties with the text. On the other hand, with his emphasis on maintaining harmony among the six Classicist social relations (p. 81), he is undoubtedly bringing to bear earlier, more conservative conceptions. Xiang’er, however, with his wacky sexual admonishments and his urgings to reject deviancy, comes across as downright proselytizing. Yet his seemingly bizarre ideas relate to older forms of Chinese religion, like ancestor worship. He talks about the afterlife rather than social harmony. At the heart of their differences are how these two commentators understand the Dao and the correct way to follow it. As religious Daoism overtook philosophical Daoism in popularity, the interpretations of ‘deliberate, contrived action’, or wei, and its ever-intriguing counterpart, ‘action without action’ or wuwei, seemed to morph while still remaining at the core of either’s interpretative understanding of the Laozi. How have ideas of wei and wuwei changed from philosophical Daoism a la Wang Bi to the religious Daoism of Xiang’er? Understanding the differences between them can help us better understand the relationship between these two divergent idea systems.

The original Chinese of the Laozi does not make its grammatical subjects and objects explicit. Instead, the interpreter can read vastly different meanings from the same passage. By assuming different subjects, the Xiang’er and Wang Bi commentaries already appear to be from different interpretative traditions. What Xiang’er takes as a command to convert evil people to the ways of the Dao, Wang Bi supposes to be a sanction of rulers who force things rather than encourage them: “‘Those with even less knowledge — terrify them’ / When you observe evil persons… draw near to them and explain to them the admonitions of the Dao, terrifying them with the awesome might of heaven so that they will reform themselves” (Xiang’er, 103), versus “‘The next [highest] is he whom they fear.’ This one is no longer able to lead the people with mercy and benevolence but relies on the power of force.” (Wang Bi, 78). Wang Bi says the still higher ruler should do nothing at all and simply trust people to do the right thing: “If one tries to enhance the condition of the people but violates their authenticity, ill will and conflict will arise” (ibid). Xiang’er understands this trust to be directed to the Dao rather than to people (103), so in his eyes the good are excused for acting against their enemies — which are, of course, the enemies of the Dao.

Wang Bi encourages would-be sages to teach by example instead actively telling people what to do, and lead by influence rather than proselytizing and enforcing laws. “Avoid insisting that you are right, and your rightness will commend itself” (Wang Bi, 89). This is the wuwei practiced by the philosophers’ Dao. Since the Dao is non-discriminating, its followers should be so as well, and not allow their own goodness to separate themselves from others. So it is that “the good man relies on goodness to keep in order those who are not good; he does not rely on goodness to discard those who are not good. This is why men who are not good are included by the good man” (101). Xiang’er, on the other hand, encourages the good to “revile and disgrace” those who would not be reformed (103). But according to Wang Bi, if your virtue distinguishes you, then it is not true virtue; if your following of the Dao causes you to cast others aside as unworthy, then you do not follow the true Dao.

Xiang’er introduces a different version of wuwei: it is not unselfconscious, but simply selfless. In order to submit to the Dao and follow its precepts without faltering, you must act for the Dao rather than for your own personal, worldly benefit. A better reward awaits adherents than can be granted by earthly authorities — immortality. “The spirits of the Dao call that person to return” (Xiang’er, 135). The Dao is seen not as the complete universe, but as a distinct entity within the universe, which nonetheless has powers that transcend all earthly ones. Yet at the same time it is tied to Earth by its attachments and desires, specifically regarding humans’ well-being. “The Dao’s aspiration is to be without body. It wants to nourish the spirits; that is the only reason it has a ‘body.’ Desiring that people model themselves on this, the Dao expresses it” (94). In other words, its attachments prevent its complete transcendence until people cultivate their own bodily spirits and pneumas. Compare this to Wang Bi’s version of the Dao, which is formless and “brings things to completion thanks to its freedom from attachments” (86, emphasis added). Xiang’er’s anthropomorphic Dao manifests its will in the form of the Laozi and other teachings (113) in order to encourage people to perfect themselves through duty and faith.

Wuwei is directed non-action: action away from the self and towards the Dao. Xiang’er encourages the avoidance of bad behaviors, so that good behaviors will naturally follow. “‘What is hollowed out will become full.’ ['Hollowed out'] means self-effacing and vacant. When one does no evil, in its place is emptiness. That Dao might be compared to water; it delights in filling empty places. When [the Dao] occupies the place where evil was, the pneumas of goodness return to fill you” (Xiang’er, 115). Similarly, he advocates celibacy, saying that “those of higher virtue possess iron wills and are able to stop coupling for the purpose of reproducing” so that “beneficent” spirits will form (84). Usually willful action is called wei, which is admonished in the Laozi. For Xiang’er, wei is the pursuit of conventional rewards, like money, power, and personal security. Wuwei, by contrast, is a different kind of willful action. The Daoist must discard worldly honors and desires, which “carve away at one’s will” (126), and thus become receptive to even more powerful forces. This requires hard work and conscious effort to achieve: “The injunctions of the Dao are extremely difficult. The Transcendent nobility achieve the Dao only by virtue of their wills” (135). But once they do achieve it, the Dao takes a liking to them and “will benevolently seek to receive them” (118), preserving them from an earthly death and granting them eternal life.

The philosophical idea of wuwei is quite different. It is a passive acceptance of the nature of things, as they are, without trying to change them. The philosophical Daoist “should follow the nature of the people and not try to carve them into shapes according to forms external to them” (Wang Bi, 100). According to Wang Bi, the Dao is already fully transcendent and not dependent on human action, and so it is indifferent as to how people behave. “Heaven and Earth allow things to follow their natural bent and neither engage in conscious effort nor start anything, leaving the myriad things to manage themselves. Thus they ‘are not benevolent’” (Wang Bi, 60) and also practice wuwei. The Dao’s absolute universality is what allows it to be in harmony with anything and everything. Since the Dao is part of the world rather than apart from it, wuwei cannot be defined as active striving to be one with the Dao. Rather, the sage “follows the path of the Natural, neither formulating nor implementing, [and] thus things attain perfection without his leaving track or print on them” (100). He does not have “conscious desire” (66) and so he does not control things. He does not push and pull in an attempt to change what is.

The Dao, in its infinite infinity, encompasses even the most willful actions. But the person who is actually practicing wei is frustrated because in his attempt to create good, he creates evil right along with it. Wang Bi emphasizes that things will still happen even when there is no conscious action: “The one who does not act causes action, and he one who does not move causes movement” (98), like the Dao itself. Removing the ego from the equation allows the Dao to take its place — in a way parallel to the way the Dao takes the place of evil within Xiang’er’s Transcendent noble — and things will be harmonious. “With such impartiality, he [the true king] attains the state wherein he has universal peace” (76). For Wang Bi, emptiness is a function of removing the ego instead of removing evil. Wuwei is about not striving, since we have already achieved the Dao.

The Xiang’er and Wang Bi commentaries have completely contradictory notions of the Dao and how to accord with it. Wang Bi, a philosophical Daoist, imagines a Dao from which you cannot escape: “If the myriad things were to abandon it and seek a different master, where would such a master be found? … It becomes one with the very dust but does not compromise its authenticity” (57). Practicing wuwei means behaving like the Dao, and allowing all things to take their natural course. Xiang’er, representing the religious Daoist position, maintains that you should “strictly control yourself by means of the precepts of the Dao; urge yourself on with the [hope of] long life. By these means you will reach the desired state” (80). For him, wuwei is the complete opposite of Wang Bi’s wuwei: his Dao is prescriptive, and it requires conscious effort to not fall off the (not-) horse. Wang Bi’s wei is just this sort of goal-oriented and willful behavior, but for Xiang’er there are good goals and bad goals. Wuwei is seeking the good goals of emptying oneself of evil and attaining transcendence. Both agree that wuwei is the way of the Dao, but what they mean by ‘wuwei’ and ‘Dao’ are completely at odds.

This contradiction occurs without either side overtly attacking the other’s point of view, placing in doubt the idea that religious Daoism developed from the earlier philosophical tradition. Instead, given the vast discrepancies between the Wang Bi and the Xiang’er commentaries, it seems more likely that there were two independent discourses that each read the Laozi as a source of wisdom upholding their own prior beliefs. The original text is full of ambiguities and paradoxes as is, and how we sort out those ambiguities and answer those paradoxes reveals something about who we were before we came to the text, even as the very act of interpretation transforms these earlier thoughts into the symbols of the Laozi. Even though the two groups — philosophy and religion — had very different ideas about the Dao and wuwei, the fact that they molded themselves to the same text and adopted some of the same language creates the (perhaps) false impression that they were part of one larger movement from philosophy to religion. These two idea systems are just too incompatible to be understood as denizens of the same symbolic universe. If the true Dao transcends all divisions, then we have not yet found it.