What is the Mysterious Mirrorin Taoism? 什么是玄鉴
Paul PengWhat is the Mysterious Mirrorin Taoism?
This term appears as “Mystic Vision” in the popular editions.
It is an important concept in the thought of Laozi.
It originates from Chapter 10 of Laozi:
“Can you cleanse your [Mystic Mirror] and be without flaw?”
“Jian” means mirror; “Xuan Jian” means the profound, mysterious mirror.
What is the Mysterious Mirrorin Taoism?
What is the Mysterious Mirrorin Taoism?Laozi uses it to refer to a luminous inner state for realizing The Dao.
Heshang Gong’s Commentary on Laozi explains it as:
“The mind dwells in the realm of mystery, perceiving all things.”
Knowledge arising in this state is neither a copy of sensation nor rational discrimination,
but an instantaneous awakening, an intuition of the mind.
Thus, one can know the world without going out;
one can realize the Heavenly Dao that produces all things without looking out the window.
Taoism holds that the correct path of knowledge is to seek within oneself.
The Dao, which flows through heaven and earth, is without form and without name.
To know the Dao, one must make the mind empty and still, free from selfishness and desire —
that is, “cleanse the Mystic Mirror” —
purifying the mind completely, free from external disturbance,
like a clear, profound mirror.
The complex myriad things and their cyclic transformations appear before it,
and one realizes the unchanging within change: the ineffable Dao.
Laozi’s epistemology of “cleansing the Mystic Mirror”
greatly influenced later Jixia Daoists, Xun Kuang, and Han Fei,
and also became a theoretical source for later Taoist doctrines and cultivation methods.
