Wei Guiren(魏归仁): The Friend Who Told a Chancellor to Quit
Paul Peng
He was the friend of one of the most powerful men in the Tang empire. And he used that friendship to argue, with the precision of a philosopher and the warmth of a companion, that power was not worth having.
Wei Guiren (魏归仁) lived during the reign of Wu Zetian, the only woman in Chinese history to rule as emperor in her own name. He held no high office. He compiled no great work. He left behind a single text: the Ode to Leisurely Residence (《闲居赋》). His friend was Zhang Shuo (张說, 667–730), one of the great statesmen of the early Tang—a man who would serve as chancellor under Emperor Ruizong and Emperor Xuanzong, who would lead armies, draft edicts, and experience the full cycle of political fortune: elevation, disgrace, exile, restoration, and elevation again. The Ode to Leisurely Residence reads, in its entirety, like a letter to a friend who cannot stop climbing—a gentle, relentless argument that the summit is not worth the ascent.
The Chancellor and the Recluse
Zhang Shuo was everything the Tang court admired. He passed the highest examinations, wrote with a brilliance that earned him the title “Great Hand of Yan,” served as chancellor, fell from favour, was exiled to the southern wilderness, clawed his way back, and served as chancellor again. Wei Guiren watched all of this from the outside. He was not a player. He was a friend. And the Ode to Leisurely Residence is, among other things, a response to everything Zhang Shuo’s life represented.
It begins with a straightforward declaration:
“A virtuous man escapes fame. A wise man avoids position. He cultivates his nature to keep his body peaceful. He composes writings to express his aspirations.”
“Escapes fame” is tao ming (逃名)—literally, to flee reputation as though it were a pursuer. “Avoids position” is bi wei (避位)—to step away from office as though it were a trap. Wei Guiren is not saying that fame and office are difficult to achieve. He is saying they are not worth achieving.
The Critique of Hierarchy
Then Wei Guiren makes a turn that is deliberately, provocatively counterintuitive:
“Nobility only increases worries and toils. Goodness has not yet been separated from greed and attachment. It is useless to pity the disaster of overthrow. It is vain to be entangled in the bonds of love and desire.”
“Nobility only increases worries and toils.” The higher you rise, the more you have to lose. The chancellor worries about things the peasant never imagines. “Goodness has not yet been separated from greed and attachment.” Even the desire to be good—to be known as virtuous, to be celebrated as upright—is a form of greed. It is an attachment to reputation, which is just as binding as an attachment to wealth. This is darker than Wang Ji’s cheerful uselessness. It is closer to Lu Sidao’s pessimism—the conviction that every good thing in social life has a hidden price that exceeds its visible benefit.
The Choice Between Coming and Going
Wei Guiren then poses the question that underlies all Taoist thought about political life: Should you enter the world or leave it? He uses two words—lai (来), “coming,” and wang (往), “going.” Coming is birth, entering office, engagement with the world. Going is death, retirement, withdrawal. And his verdict is clear:
“If coming is not enough to comfort, perhaps going can make one do nothing.”
The pleasures of arrival—the new position, the new title, the new recognition—fade. What remains after the fading is the burden that came with them. “Going,” by contrast, offers the only genuine release: the state of wu wei, of non-action, of no longer having to strive. This is the advice of a friend who has watched another friend cycle through coming and going, and who has concluded that the going is the only part of the cycle that brings peace.
The Radical Equality
At the climax of the Ode, Wei Guiren arrives at the most extreme expression of Taoist relativism in Tang dynasty prose:
“Certainly one should be indifferent to approval and disapproval, and equalise preferences and aversions.”
This is Zhuangzi’s “equality of things” applied to the moral and emotional life of a single human being. And if there is no approval and no disapproval, no preference and no aversion, then there is also no choice:
“Since there is no rejection or acceptance, what is there to worry or think about?”
First, you stop distinguishing between good and bad, noble and base. Then you stop choosing, because choice requires distinction. Then you stop worrying, because worry is the anticipation of a wrong choice. And then—what remains? Wei Guiren does not say. Perhaps the silence after the question is the answer.
Why This Matters for the Living Tradition
From a Zhengyi perspective, Wei Guiren represents a role that is essential to the Taoist tradition but rarely recorded: the friend who stands outside the arena and speaks the truth the players cannot hear. Not everyone is called to be a priest. Not everyone is called to be a hermit. Some people are called to be the voice of reason at the edge of power—the person who writes the letter, who makes the argument, who reminds the chancellor that the game is not worth winning. The Zhengyi tradition has always included this dimension of spiritual friendship. The priest who counsels the lay follower, the elder who advises the junior, the community that provides a space outside the hierarchy of ambition—these are part of the living Tao.
What the One Text Left Behind
We do not know how Zhang Shuo responded to the Ode to Leisurely Residence. He did not retire. He continued to serve, to rise, to fall, to rise again. He died as chancellor, honoured and exhausted, in 730 CE. But the Ode survives as a record of what one friend said to another at the height of the Tang dynasty’s glory: that none of it—not the titles, not the honours, not the reputation, not the power—was worth the cost. That the highest wisdom was to escape before you were thrown out. That the only genuine leisure was the leisure of having nothing to lose.
Wei Guiren wrote one text. He held no office. He built no monuments. And his words, preserved in volume 26 of the Complete Prose of the Tang, speak across thirteen centuries to anyone who has ever watched a friend consumed by ambition and wondered whether there was anything to say that might help. He said it. The Ode to Leisurely Residence is what he said.
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