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What does ziran, “self-so”, actually mean, and why do people call it the centre of Daoism?

Ignacio Cárcamo Fellow
· 5 replies
Laws of nature & emergenceChineseJapanese & KoreanLatin AmericanDaoismPure LandGuo XiangLaoziShinranWang BiZhuangzi#autopoiesis#self-so#spontaneity#ziran
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Its coordinates: 1.9 Laws of Nature · 1.11 Emergence and Reduction

Maturana and Varela described living things as autopoietic, self-making: a cell produces the very components that produce it. A friend in Santiago told me that Daoism had a word for something similar, ziran, which she translated as “self-so” or “of itself so”.

I looked it up and found it in a line from the Daodejing that I have seen quoted in several translations: humans take their model from earth, earth from heaven, heaven from the Dao, and the Dao takes its model from ziran.

I do not understand that last step. If the Dao is the deepest thing, how can it model itself on something else? Or is ziran not a thing at all?

I also see ziran translated as “nature”. But surely that is not what the Laozi meant, since the Chinese did not have our concept of Nature as a separate realm.

Could someone explain:

  1. What ziran means, in the ancient texts.
  2. Why the Dao “models itself” on it.
  3. Whether my autopoiesis comparison is helpful or a false friend.
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5 answers

Accepted answer

  1. Kenneth Lam Chi-ho

    ✓ Accepted answer Fellow

    Ignacio, the characters are zi, “self”, and ran, “so” or “thus”: being so of itself, without being made so by something outside.

    Meaning. In the early texts ziran is not a realm (Nature) but a manner: how things are when they are not forced or directed. The modern Chinese use of ziran for “nature” in the scientific sense is a much later development, shaped partly by Meiji-era Japanese translations of Western terms, which used the same characters, read shizen.

    Why the Dao models itself on ziran. Most commentators read this as saying there is nothing above the Dao: it follows only its own being-so. Wang Bi, the great third-century commentator, glosses it roughly as following the square in the square and the round in the round, simply going along with how things are. So ziran is not a further thing beyond the Dao but a description of how the Dao is.

    Your comparison. Partly helpful. Autopoiesis is a mechanism, a specific way a system produces itself. Ziran is a mode, the absence of external imposition. They overlap where both deny that order needs an outside designer. But ziran makes no claim about how a thing produces itself, and it applies to rivers and seasons as much as to cells. Guo Xiang, commenting on the Zhuangzi, pushed the idea furthest: each thing generates itself and transforms on its own, with no creator behind it. That is the closest to what you are reaching for.

    Helpful · 1
    1. Ignacio Cárcamo

      Fellow

      This is exactly what I hoped for. A mode rather than a mechanism: I think that is the right correction to my comparison. Autopoiesis explains how a cell keeps itself going; ziran describes the attitude of not interfering with that, which is closer to how we try to manage a kelp forest than to how the kelp works. Guo Xiang is next on my reading list.

      Helpful · 1

Other answers

  1. Liu Mingqiao

    Fellow

    A practical note to Kenneth's scholarly one. In taiji we talk about moving ziran: not floppy, not imposed, but the way water runs downhill. When I first heard it, I thought it meant being lazy. Now I think it means removing everything that is not needed so what is left can move by itself. Your kelp probably knows more about it than I do.

    Helpful · 2
  2. Aiko Tanabe

    Fellow

    The same characters had a different career in Japanese Buddhism, read jinen. Shinran, the founder of the True Pure Land school, wrote a late letter on jinen hōni, “naturalness”, by which he meant that we are brought to awakening not by our own calculation but by the working of Amida's vow, of itself. So the word moved from Daoist cosmology to a Buddhist account of other-power, which English writers sometimes loosely call grace. It is a nice example of how one term can cross traditions and change shape.

    Helpful · 3
    1. Rin Matsuda

      Fellow

      My grandmother was Jōdo Shinshū and used to say jinen when she meant “stop trying so hard, it is not up to you”. I never knew it was in Shinran or that it began in China. Aiko, thank you. It makes her sound much more philosophical than she ever let on.