Figures of Taoism: Yun Xian 员蚬

Yun Xian was a scholar of the Tang Dynasty.

During the reign of Emperor Xuanzong, he once passed the "Shupan Bacui" imperial examination (a selection exam for talented officials based on their performance in writing documents and making judgments).

In philosophy, he leaned towards Taoism and adhered to Zhuangzi's relativist viewpoints, denying objective truth. He negated the objective content of cognition by emphasizing its subjective characteristics, believing that everyone views things from the perspective of "my own heart," and thus it is impossible to make correct judgments that conform to objective reality on all matters, including worries, joys, praises, and criticisms.

He said: "Life is finite, yet knowledge is endless. The roc and the sparrow are not sufficient to fit their respective positions; Confucianism and Mohism can hardly reconcile their principles. What the world calls worry, I find precisely cause for joy; what the world praises, I find precisely cause for criticism. When viewing things from my own heart, I cannot tell which of these four (worry, joy, praise, criticism) is correct" (Fu on Deluded Thoughts).

Citing the instinctive reactions of animals (birds and fish) as evidence, he denied the objectivity of beauty.

He stated that a beautiful young woman, with her hair arranged and lips painted red, as bright as the rising moon and as fragrant as spring flowers, "must be the great beauty of the world, and thus should be loved by all. But why is it that birds, upon seeing her, fly away to the layers of clouds; fish, upon seeing her, dive into the deep springs and do not emerge? Beauty and ugliness are not determined by me, so how can I know where the mistake lies?" (Ibid.)

Taking music appreciation as another example, he illustrated that there can be no objective standards for understanding things: "Alas, when it comes to love and hatred towards things, how can I know who is in the right?" (Ibid.)

He denied the essential distinction between life and death, believing that while life is certainly worthy of admiration, death can also bring contentment, even comparable to the supreme dignity enjoyed by emperors ("no different from the supreme honor of sitting facing south [as a ruler]"). He said: "To claim that death is right and life is wrong—why do existence and annihilation conflict, and self and others oppose each other?" (Ibid.)

His adherence to relativism aimed to negate real life and provide a theoretical basis for the fantasy of renouncing the world. He regarded real life itself as suffering, and believed that human bodies and emotions are both illusory and unreal. He said: "From the moment I had a body, worries were born with it. The body is an illusory vessel, and worries are deluded emotions. Karmic attachments secretly form, and greedy desires grow day by day, like a mad dog chasing a clod of earth, or a moth flying towards the light" (Ibid.).

He considered all activities aimed at transforming the real world as meaningless and fruitless. He also advocated that "stillness is what controls movement" (Ibid.), regarding stillness as the most fundamental thing. Some of his works are compiled in Volume 450 of The Complete Prose of the Tang Dynasty.