Yuandu Yiwei Jing (缘督以为经)
Yuandu yiwei jing 缘督以为经, 'following the middle as the constant' — the Yang Sheng Zhu's opening rule: do good without nearing fame, do bad without nearing punishment, follow the middle as the warp-thread. The word du names both the body's central line (the Du meridian of the back) and the middle course between the two named edges — the chapter's life-version of the butcher's gap.
The term
缘督以为经 (yuán dū yǐ wéi jīng) — “follow the middle as the constant.” The term is the Yang Sheng Zhu’s opening rule, planted between the chapter’s two famous sentences: 吾生也有涯，而知也无涯 (my life has a limit, but knowledge has none) before it, and the four outcomes after it — 可以保身，可以全生，可以养亲，可以尽年 (it can protect the body, complete the life, care for parents, live out the years). The rule itself sits between two named edges: 为善无近名，为恶无近刑 — do good without nearing fame, do bad without nearing punishment — and 缘督 is the line that runs between them.
Why the term matters
- 督 means the middle — and the body’s middle. The word does double work, and the tradition has kept both readings alive for two thousand years. The lexical gloss is 中也 — 督 is the middle — with Guo Xiang’s note the standard statement: 缘督以为经者，顺中以为常也 (to follow the middle as the constant). The body-layer reading is Wang Fuzhi’s: the back’s central line, the Du vessel — 督者居静，而不倚于左右 (the Du dwells in stillness, leaning to neither side), a channel with a place in the vessel-map and no material form. The site registers both without adjudicating: the middle course between the two edges and the middle line of the body are the same image seen from the life-side and the body-side — and the fact that the two readings have coexisted rather than replaced each other is itself the term’s meaning: the middle is a line, not a doctrine.
- The two edges are the frame. 为善无近名，为恶无近刑 is one of the book’s most contested sentences, and the site keeps the reading question open the way the Renmin University essay documents it: the Guo Xiang–Cheng Xuanying reading (forget both good and evil and dwell in the middle — 善恶两忘，刑名双遣), the no-doing reading (Zhao Yifu: 恶固不可为，善亦不必为 — bad must not be done, good need not be done either, since doing either is the mechanism that approaches name and punishment), and Zhu Xi’s recorded critique of the whole passage as mere self-preservation (依阿于其间 — leaning opportunistically between). The site’s discipline: the sentence names the two edges, and whatever the correct reading of the edges is, 缘督 is the refusal of both — the chapter’s own word for not committing to either named side.
- It is the butcher’s rule in life-form. The chapter’s structure makes the pairing explicit: the opening rule is stated, and then the cook’s story performs it with a knife. The cook follows 天理 (the heaven-grain), 批大郤 (opens the big gaps), 導大窾 (guides through the cavities), 因其固然 (goes by what is already so) — and the knife never touches bone because the joints have 間, gaps. 缘督 is the same arithmetic for a whole life: the middle is the gap, and following it is what the cook means by 以无厚入有间 (entering the gaps with what has no thickness). The site’s emptiness pages hold the shared claim: what the butcher’s knife and the life both follow is the part that is not filled in.
- The four outcomes are the term’s proof. 保身、全生、养亲、尽年 — protect the body, complete the life, care for parents, live out the years — are not four rewards but four restatements of the same outcome, and they keep the term honest: 缘督以为经 is not a spiritual summit but a maintenance rule, the chapter’s own title (养生主, the essentials of nurturing life) translated into a method. The site’s sitting pages hold the boundary the outcomes set: the tradition’s life-nurturing claims are registered as the tradition’s, not as medical fact.
- The boundary the site keeps. Two borrowings must be named and held off. The Buddhist middle way is not this term: the Daoist middle is the empty channel between the two named options, not the synthesis of them — 缘督 says do neither fully, where the middle way says see through the pair. And the Song Confucians read 督 as the Zhongyong’s 中 (Wang Pang: 缘督以为经，所谓道中庸也), a reading the Renmin University essay flags as a Confucian lens on a Daoist text — the site registers the borrowing without adopting it, per its cross-tradition boundary. What survives every lens is the image itself: a line that runs where the two edges do not reach.
Sources
- Zhuangzi ch. 3 (Yang Sheng Zhu, inner chapter), opening lines, verified against the Wikisource full chapter (retrieved 2026-10-07) and the Shidianguji Zhuangzi Yi edition carrying the Guo Xiang commentary, which agree on: 吾生也有涯，而知也无涯。以有涯随无涯，殆已。已而为知者，殆而已矣。为善无近名，为恶无近刑，缘督以为经，可以保身，可以全生，可以养亲，可以尽年 — with the Shidianguji edition's variant 可以养生 for 可以全生 registered
- The commentary trail on 缘督以为经: Guo Xiang's note (缘督以为经者，顺中以为常也 — follow the middle as the constant), Cheng Xuanying's subcommentary (善恶两忘，刑名双遣，故能顺一中之道 — both good and evil forgotten, both punishment and name dismissed, following the single middle), Zhao Yifu's gloss (督，中也 — du is the middle), and Wang Fuzhi's body-layer reading (身前之中脉曰任，身后之中脉曰督。督者居静，而不倚于左右，有脉之位而无形质者也 — the front central vessel is the Ren, the back central vessel is the Du; the Du dwells in stillness, leaning to neither side, a place in the vessel-system without material form) — as carried by the China Daoist Association's study and the Renmin University philosophy faculty's reading essay, which also records the contest over the passage (Zhu Xi's critique of the middle-course reading as mere self-preservation; the Song-era Confucian reading of du as the Zhongyong's 中); registered here as the reading question is contested, not adjudicated