Lu Sidao(卢思道): The Darkest Voice in Taoist Philosophy
Paul Peng
He was one of the finest poets of his generation. He served three dynasties. He held high office. He was admired, respected, promoted, honoured.
And he wrote, with the clarity of a man who has studied his own life and found nothing worth keeping, that it would have been better never to have been born.
Lu Sidao (卢思道, 535–586 CE) is the darkest voice in the Taoist philosophical tradition. He is not a sage of freedom like Zhuangzi. He is not a master of knowing when to stop like Shu Guang. He is not a drunken celebrant of uselessness like Wang Ji. He is the man who looked at the world—at his own talents, his own achievements, his own reputation—and concluded that all of it, without exception, was a source of suffering.
The Poet of Three Dynasties
Lu Sidao was born in 535 CE in Fanyang—present-day Zhuoxian in Hebei. He studied under Xing Shao, one of the “Three Talents of the Northern Dynasties,” and earned a reputation for literary brilliance while still a young man. He served the Northern Qi as a retainer to the crown prince and as a Gentleman of the Yellow Gate. When the Northern Zhou conquered the Qi, he transferred his allegiance and was appointed Prefect of Wuyang. When the Sui replaced the Zhou, he transferred again and became a Cavalier Attendant-in-Ordinary. Three dynasties. Three regimes. Three sets of rulers to serve, placate, and survive. Lu Sidao was a political survivor. But survival came at a cost, and the Discourse on a Life of Toil is the receipt.
The Discourse That Should Never Have Been Written
The Discourse on a Life of Toil (《劳生论》) begins with a line from the Zhuangzi, chapter eighteen—“The Greatest Happiness”: “Man is born, and with him come worry and fear.” Lu Sidao takes it in a different direction. He wants to catalogue, systematically, exactly what those worries and fears consist of—from the inside, as a man who has experienced every item on the list.
“Truly, it is better not to be born than to be born. As for my own life, it has been filled with unceasing toil.”
“In my youth, I embraced teachings and principles, behaving strictly according to rules and striving to do good. After coming of age, I entered official service, bound by the reins of benevolence and righteousness, trapped in the bustle of court and market. I lost the innate nature of leaping freely and the distant sentiments of rivers and lakes, sinking into these disturbances, drowning in setbacks.”
“Benevolence and righteousness”—the highest Confucian virtues—are described as reins, things that bind. The “innate nature of leaping freely” is the Taoist self that existed before society got hold of it. Then comes the most bitter passage:
“A noble family background arouses suspicion from those in menial positions. Outstanding talent and wisdom invite jealousy from the ignorant and mediocre. Dedication to learning and a retentive memory make the dull-witted glare with resentment. Clear and fluent speech causes the tongue-tied to feel distressed.”
Lu Sidao is not saying that the world punishes vice. He is saying something far more disturbing: the world punishes virtue. Good birth brings suspicion. Talent brings jealousy. Learning brings resentment. Eloquence brings hostility. There is no safe way to be excellent. Every strength is a target. The conclusion is not a call to action. It is a diagnosis from which there is no recovery:
“Worries and toils converge from all sides, not limited to a single source. Why? Because to be alive is to be exposed.”
The Cure That Is Not a Cure
Having diagnosed the disease, Lu Sidao proposes a treatment. It is not a cure. There is no cure for being alive.
“Keep the mind as dead ashes. Do not pursue power and gain. Turn a deaf ear and a blind eye to the shocking and filthy things in society. Retire to the countryside. Plow fields and dig wells. Rest at dusk and rise at dawn.”
“Dead ashes” is a phrase from the Zhuangzi, where it describes the meditation master who has so completely emptied himself that he appears to have returned to the inanimate. But in Zhuangzi, the dead ashes are a stage on the way to spiritual freedom. In Lu Sidao, they are the destination. This is not the joyful withdrawal of Wang Ji, who built his cottage on a river islet and spent his days drinking and laughing with friends. This is an eremiticism stripped of all romance. Lu Sidao is not going to the countryside to find freedom. He is going to hide.
The Swan in the Cage
The Ode to the Solitary Swan (《孤鸿赋》) takes the same philosophy and turns it into an allegory. A wild swan lives in the open landscape—flying when it wants, resting when it wants, its life a continuous expression of its own nature. Then someone captures it and puts it in a cage.
“Then it tucks its wings and bends its neck. It holds its breath and falls silent. It extinguishes the lofty longing for mist and clouds. It stifles the quiet sentiment for rivers and seas.”
The swan is fed. It is safe. It may be treasured by its captor. But something essential has been extinguished. Then Lu Sidao adds the most devastating line:
“It does not listen to the music of Xianchi. It does not partake in the grand sacrifices of Tailao.”
Xianchi is the legendary music of the Yellow Emperor. Tailao is the highest ritual offering. The caged swan is offered the finest things civilisation can provide. It refuses them all. Not because they are not valuable. Because they have nothing to do with what a swan is. And then the ultimate principle:
“Each follows its nature under heaven and earth, without longing that stirs conflict.”
The world—the world of courts and offices and reputations and promotions—is a cage that takes your nature away and offers you Xianchi music in return. The swan, wiser than most humans, refuses to be consoled.
Why This Matters for the Living Tradition
Lu Sidao’s solution—retire alone to the countryside, plow fields, keep the mind as dead ashes—is a one-man practice. There is no community in it, no ritual, no transmission. The Zhengyi tradition, by contrast, offers what Lu Sidao could not imagine: a Taoism that is practised together, in liturgy and lineage, where the priest does not have to choose between the court and the wilderness because the altar is a third place, neither cage nor solitude. The solitary swan who refuses the ritual music of the captor would perhaps have found a different music in the liturgy of the Zhengyi altar—a music that was not compensation for captivity but an expression of alignment with the Tao.
What Lu Sidao Left Behind
Lu Sidao died in 586 CE, at the age of fifty-one. His collected works in thirty volumes were lost early. What remains—the Discourse on a Life of Toil, the Ode to the Solitary Swan, and a handful of other pieces—was assembled by Ming dynasty scholars from quotations preserved in encyclopedias.
He is not an easy figure to celebrate. His philosophy offers no comfort. His diagnosis of the human condition is that the condition itself is the problem. But he is valuable precisely for this reason. The Taoist tradition contains multitudes. And it has Lu Sidao, who reminds us that for some people, in some circumstances, the promise of the Tao is not transcendence or joy or even peace. It is simply the possibility of escape. The caged swan that refuses to sing is also a Taoist image. It is the image of a soul that has not forgotten what freedom felt like.
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