So now we can talk about transcendence Chinese style. We've gone from Di in the Shang, to Tian in the Zhou, to Dao in the empire. And notice the difference: the first two are anthropomorphic and the last is linked to Tiandao 天道. We've already seen how the Tian, which is part anthropomorphic and part not, is combined in that term Tiandao, which refers to the regularity and automaticity of the laws of Heaven. Now we can quote here from Mawangdui 馬王堆 <i>Laozi</i>. There's an appendice. These go back to the very early part of the Western Han dynasty—so second century BC. Very comparable to what we looked at the last time where we saw spring and summer on the one hand being the <i>yang</i> seasons and then autumn and winter (being the <i>yin</i>). But here a very interesting shift: "There are three seasons for maturing and bearing fruit, one for punishments and death." So there's three seasons which belong to growth and to <i>ren</i> 仁 and to benevolence as we saw that, and only one season now—winter—which is the season of death. "Such is the way things function in the universe. Each of the four seasons arrives in its time, and their course knows neither difficulty nor deviance. They are ruled by an immutable law." <i>Fa</i>: "ruled by an immutable law." And the whole idea of the <i>fajia</i>, or Legalist system, is to create a system here on earth which imitates the system with its immutability, its unchanging and regularity—to imitate that here on earth with a system of laws. "So the seasons replace each other the one after the other in a regular cycle that, once accomplished, begins anew." Okay, that's that <i>tiandao</i>, the way of Heaven. Now this has to be translated—this is the natural way, we could say, this has to be translated into a social law, if we're going to bring that regular calendrical heaven down to earth. And Levi says, "the place of this translation of the natural into the social is the Mingtang 明堂." There we have it again, the Hall of Light. "The Mingtang is a building meant to be a replica of the cosmos, with its roof round like the heavens and its base square like the earth." You know what? Go to Beijing. Go to the Tiantan 天壇. And go look at the place for the sacrifice to Heaven, all the way down to in fact 1914, even past the empire, because Yuan Shikai 袁世凱 did the last sacrifice to Heaven. And you'll see that it's a round heaven on a square base. So this has in fact continued right straight through as the defining structure of, the key architecture of empire. So, but it's not the only, shall we say, constructed space that unites heaven and earth in its structure, because they thought, the ancient Chinese, of the human being is also conjoining heaven and earth, because he has a round head and, well, they say square feet, flat feet. But in any case, so we also combine the— and of course then the heart being that which unites heaven and earth on the level of the human microcosm. Okay, so: "and it contains four oriented facades for each of the directions around a central room." "Thus did it represent the totality of the spatio-temporal universe, with its five directions and 12 months. The Son of Heaven circulated in this building according to the seasons and signified, by virtue of his position, the general configuration of the moment…" So in fact he had to go to the Mingtang every month to do a sacrifice appropriate to that particular moment in the season. And by "the circulation of the sovereign, by the mere fact of his route, he wove a fabric of seasons converted into a liturgical norm… The Hall of Light is defined by the ritual specialists as the center from which regulations and teachings were made (known)." So we've talked a lot about the Mingtang, the Hall of Lights, and of course the sacrifice to Heaven. And so what I'd like to show you now is some images, first of all, of the Tiantan, which you can still visit in Beijing today, and then go back and look at images of the Mingtang. First, a set of two which are reconstructions based on written text and then two other images which give a slightly different picture of, based on archaeological digs, of the Mingtang. So we start with the Tiantan here in Beijing, an aerial view obviously, and you can see immediately that you have in the center a building which is round, with a round terracing around it and of course it is situated in a square environment and so here we have the round heaven and the square earth. Okay? And of course <i>tiandi</i> 天地—that's what makes a universe in China, that's what makes a space —and then of course what happens here is that the emperor who represents the third party —<i>tian, di, ren</i> 天地人, Heaven, earth, man —the Son of Heaven comes here once every three years starting, as we saw, at the time of Wang Mang right at the beginning of our era, the New dynasty, and then from then on right down to 1914 to go and make this sacrifice to Heaven. So normally when he's in the Forbidden City which is north of here, the emperor is in the position of the, well, of the emperor, that is to say <i>nanmian erzuo</i> 南面而坐, but when he comes here, he has to enter from the south and so he's the one who is facing not south but north. Then, who's facing south? Well, of course, it's Heaven. So he comes to sacrifice first to Heaven here in the central pavilion, and that, it's called actually the <i>qiniandian</i> 祈年殿, that is to say the Hall for prayer, for a good harvest, okay? And then after that, he would go and face west in order to sacrifice to the ancestors, so the ancestors would be associated with this sacrifice to Heaven by which he designated himself, he showed himself to the entire world—and in any case, a large number of courtiers who followed of course the emperor to participate, to watch this great ritual spectacle—where he showed himself as the Son of Heaven. Okay? So: this is the Tiantan which you're very much urged to visit. And before we leave it, I would simply like to point out that when you go, don't forget to go over here, because there's something very very important over there for the story, that is to say a Daoist abbey called the Daoist Abbey of divine music, the Shenyueguan 神樂觀, and the building is still there. And in fact, from the time that Beijing was built by the third Ming emperor, the Yongle huangdi 永樂皇帝, the Daoists did the music, the dancing, and the rituals for the sacrifice to Heaven and this continued all the way into the middle of the 18th century, so half of the Qing Dynasty as well. The rituals for the sacrifice to for Heaven and the music were all performed by Daoists from the <i>shenyueguan</i>. So now we look quickly at the, it's called the <i>fuyuantu</i> 復原圖, that is to say a restoration based on texts and how then the specialists imagined on the basis of these texts what this Mingtang looked like. So it's not the place for the sacrifice to Heaven, but it's also very very closely associated with it and above all, as we've seen, the Mingtang, this Hall of Lights, embodies the role of the emperor who is modeling himself on the seasons. So he is the Son of Heaven, but by now the Son of Heaven is the Son of a heaven which is the heaven of the stars and the changing seasons. Okay? And so: what we've seen is that he has to do specific rites in the Hall of Lights and that's what we're going to look at. But, first of all, what you can see here is that even though it, the building itself is square, it is nonetheless in a round —a round, it's called the <i>biyong</i> 辟雍, it's the moat, and here you have a close-up of the same building. So here very clearly on the basis of this reconstruction based on early texts about rites, the building looks perfectly square and it's in a round <i>biyong</i> moat, okay? But now if we look instead at the archaeologist's version of what the Mingtang that, or the traces of the Mingtang, the foundations of the Mingtang from the Han dynasty that they found, we see quite a different matter which is much closer in fact to the Tiantan that we just saw. And you can see immediately that the central building is round and then the larger building is basically square, okay? And in addition to that then—so Heaven and earth, a combination of Heaven and earth, the same thing that we saw 2000 years later in the Tiantan of Beijing, but to just to show you how this building then represents this <i>yinyang</i> 陰陽 <i>wuxing</i> 五行 cosmology that we've talked so much —the emergence of the cosmology, how important this was to the founding of empire and therefore to the expression of the Son of Heaven now as not king but as emperor, okay? And so: the <i>wuxing</i> or the five seasons, five elements, five phases, they're all clearly marked on this reconstruction. So first of all, here you can see it's marked<i> tu</i> 土, that is to say earth, okay? So this represents the southwest, the center of the year. We'll come back to that with the next photo where we can see the other four seasons, okay? So: now here we can see that the other —so everything around that central building which we just saw, it's round and represents the center, which is logical enough, okay? —so over here we have water and winter. Winter, okay? So: this is the north obviously, that means down here we have the south and therefore we have fire, which is the element of the south, and it's also the summer. So, the two solstices, the winter solstice and the summer solstice, and then on the east and on the west you have, by contrast, of course, you have the autumn and the autumn's element or phase is metal, and then over here, you have spring and its element, wood, okay? So: <i>shuihuo mujintu</i> 水火木金土 is often the way they say it. So <i>shui</i> up in the north; <i>huo</i>, fire, down in the south, summer; and then <i>mu</i> over on the east, for spring; and over here in the west, autumn, okay? So: you say, well, so then where is <i>tu</i>? Well, we've just said it. The central element in the central season therefore is this non-existent season, this imaginary season, but which is nonetheless the center of the whole picture. Where is it? Well, it's down here in the southwest. Why there in the southwest? Well, because spring and summer, those are the <i>yang</i> months. That's the first half of the year. The first three months of spring and the three months of summer. This <i>yang</i> half of the year and then the <i>yin</i> half of a year, the autumn and the fall, okay? Now, one other thing that you can then see —so that means that when we'll reach the middle, when the year passes from the <i>yang</i> to the <i>yin</i>, there must have been a ritual performed in the middle for the earth, for Huangdi, Yellow Emperor, as we saw because of course these elements are also associated with the worship of the Five Emperors, okay? —the Wudi 五帝, okay? So: but notice something else about this picture is that it shows us in, for each season, it shows one large room, but if you look at each large room, primary central room, on the four orients, there's also a side room, okay? And these side rooms in fact represent the other months. So the large rooms represent north south—the solstices, and east west—the equinoxes, and then these corner rooms represent the additional months. So this would be the first month, the first month of summer, and then the main month of summer, and then finally the third month of summer over here before you move on. Well, of course, then here you have the rituals that take place at the transition point between <i>yang</i> and <i>yin</i> and then the same: three, three, three. So you have the twelve months of the year plus that central ritual. So remember what we've said is that the Son of Heaven is now circulating and doing rituals which are appropriate to each month during the course of the year and so that is what it means concretely to model himself —in this agricultural country that is China—to model himself on the seasons, to model himself on Heaven and thereby gives an image to the rest of the world of what it means to be obedient, to be filial. So he's filial and everybody else is supposed to be filial to their parents just as he is filial to his father, the Heavens.
