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The Dao – An Ancient Cure for Modern Ills
At eighty years of age, he admitted defeat. Whether in the Imperial Court or muddy alleys, men remained unnatural creatures. They muddled themselves with endless distinctions, knowledge that only stoked desire for the worthless. Could any unlearn themselves and return to nature’s way? In stillness, Laozi heard the answer: not a one. Thus he prepared for a journey to the West, to the mountains from whence, a thousand years later, Buddhism would come. At the border of the Middle Kingdom and the wild beyond, a sentry prevailed on him to record his teachings. Laozi complied, and composed “The Way and Its Power”, the Dao De Jing.
With five thousand characters, Laozi had enshrined the essence of a way of life, one espoused by sages long forgotten even in his time. From its dawn, civilization proved far less stable and enduring than the harmony of nature’s divine order, cyclical and regenerative. So before the Chinese had much beyond bronze axes with which to hew trees, they had tree-huggers, venerable naturalists who espoused action through inaction (wu wei), detachment, spontaneity, and the search for a long healthy life. This was the earliest Daoism, not a religion, not even a philosophy. Only the Way.
Laozi had a contemporary in Confucius. Kongzi’s teachings embodied yang, action ordered by heaven, cultivation and polishing of human nature, structuring human relationships. Daoism, on the other hand, was and is very much yin, a quietism that begets receptivity and spontaneity, so that its practitioner may act without acting, and determine heaven’s will instinctively. Taken together, Confucianism and Daoism comprise the two sides of the Chinese collective mind. Buddhism would come much later, to leaven and expand an already ancient dichotomy.
In 440 CE, a century before Boddhidarma arrived at the Shaolin Temple, the Eastern Han Dynasty proclaimed Daoism the state religion, and Laozi a deity. He no doubt would have laughed at the Dao of it all, how his book of poems, meant to teach us the fluidity of water, had now been co-opted to solidify power. The ensuing movement to name the nameless produced a dozen sects, a thousand gods, and millions of words of explication. Now all that is relevant only as Chinese history, but the Dao remains, the source of all creation, able to embrace all contradictions. Thus can Dao be the journey, not the destination, the process, and not the product. One thing it can’t be is defined, for it lies in every definition, making the Dao of Pooh as legitimate as the Dao of the universe.
A Cure for Troubled Times
Jesus was revealed by St. Paul, Socrates by Plato, and Laozi by Zhuangzi. Two hundred years after Laozi departed, Zhuangzi expanded on the Old Master’s epigrams, with thirty three chapters of parable, anecdote, and sage discourse. Even those who abhorred his slander of Confucius admired his style and depth, making him the premier writer of the Chou Dynasty.
Like Laozi before him, and us today, Zhuangzi lived in troubled times. The common people were powerless; upheaval left many hungry and homeless; the future looked bleak. An excerpt from Zhuangzi’s “This Human World” demonstrates that temporal affairs change in name and place, but not in principle.
“I hear,” said Yen Hui, “that the Prince of Wei is old, yet still unmanageable in disposition. He behaves as if the people were of no account, and will not see his own faults. He disregards human lives and the people perish; their corpses lie about like so much undergrowth in a swamp. The people do not know where to turn for help. Perchance I may do some good at that state.”
“Alas!” cried the Master, “you will only be going to your doom. For Tao must not bustle about. If it does it will have divergent aims. From divergent aims come restlessness; from restlessness comes worry, and from worry one reaches the stage of being beyond hope. The Sages of old first strengthened their own character before they tried to strengthen that of others.
Of old, Yao attacked the lands of Cungchi and Xu. The countries were laid waste, their inhabitants slaughtered, their rulers killed. Yet they fought without ceasing, and strove for material objects to the last. These are instances of striving for fame or for material objects. Have you not heard that even Sages cannot overcome this love of fame and this desire for material objects in rulers? Are you then likely to succeed?
Instead, do without any sort of labels or self- advertisements. Keep to the One and let things take their natural course. Good luck dwells in repose. Without repose, your mind will be galloping about though you sit still. Let your ears and eyes communicate within, but shut out all knowledge from the mind. Then the spirits will come to dwell therein, not to mention man. This is the method for influencing all Creation.”
A Cure for Troubled Minds
Although only two centuries old by Zhuangzi’s time, Confucianism had become the very basis of Chinese civilization. A system of ritual conduct and fixed family hierarchy, it restrained the individual and restricted free expression. Today, Confucianism is rapidly being subsumed into the default cult of the individual, expressed through consumerism. Money is equated with fulfillment, possessions with happiness. The individual remains self-imprisoned. This excerpt from “Autumnal Floods” was meant as an escape plan of sorts.
In the time of autumn floods, a hundred streams poured into the river. Then the Spirit of the River laughed for joy that all the beauty of the earth was gathered to himself. Down the stream he journeyed east, until he reached the North Sea. There, looking eastwards and seeing no limit to its wide expanse, his countenance began to change. And as he gazed over the ocean, he sighed and said to North-Sea Jo, “A vulgar proverb says that he who has heard a great many truths thinks no one equal to himself. And such a one am I.”
To this North-Sea Jo (the Spirit of the Ocean) replied, “You cannot speak of ocean to a well-frog, which is limited by his abode. You cannot speak of ice to a summer insect, which is limited by his short life. You cannot speak of Tao to a pedagogue, who is limited in his knowledge. But now that you have emerged from your narrow sphere and have seen the great ocean, you know your own insignificance, and I can speak to you of great principles.
“Are not the Four Seas to the universe but ant-holes in a marsh? Is not the Middle Kingdom to the surrounding ocean a seed in a granary? Of all the myriad created things, man is but one. And of all those who inhabit the Nine Continents, live on the fruit of the earth, and move about in cart and boat, an individual man is but one. Is not he, as compared with all creation, but the tip of a hair upon a horse’s body?
“Dimensions are limitless; time is endless. Conditions are not constant; terms are not final. Thus, the wise man looks into space, and does not regard the small as too little, nor the great as too much; for he knows that there is no limit to dimensions. He looks back into the past, and does not grieve over what is far off, nor rejoice over what is near; for he knows that time is without end. He investigates fullness and decay, and therefore does not rejoice if he succeeds, nor lament if he fails; for he knows that conditions are not constant. He who clearly apprehends the scheme of existence does not rejoice over life, nor repine at death; for he knows that terms are not final.
When Answers Lie in Wondering
Now that scientists can measure and observe the tiniest discrete pieces of matter, they find themselves more confused then ever. How can one thing be in two places at the same time? Why do inanimate quanta act as if they know when they’re being watched? Cutting edge physics now borders the world of magic.
Neither Laozi nor Zhuangzi could have written a formal proof, but they would both assert that science was approaching the ability to see things in their actual state, rather than the classical states that keep us all spellbound, seeing duality when there is only unity. Thus do we wonder about the chicken and the egg, refusing to see that a separate bird and egg are just reflections of the one, growing from and producing the eternal seed.
What can the pragmatist take from all this Daoist wool gathering? An understanding that conditions are never final, and peace from seeking the one behind the many. The closer one gets to paradox, the closer one gets to truth.
A misfortune is where a fortune lies; a fortune is where a misfortune lies.
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You are mixing different romanization systems for Chinese names–Tao/Dao, Lao Tzu/Lao Zi, etc
It has become fashionable in modern scholastic circles to say that someone simply compiled bits and pieces of ancient folk wisdom into the eighty-one short verses which make up the Dao De Jing and this may, indeed, be what happened.
The Dao De Jing, along with the Zhuangzi is one of the core texts of the Chinese way of thinking known as “Daoism”. This word has a number of meanings. In these early texts Daosm is manifest as a sophisticated view of the world which mediates on the nature of the world.
Reverence for ancestor spirits and immortality are also common in popular Taoism. Organized Taoism distinguishes its ritual activity from that of the folk religion, which some professional Taoists (Daoshi) view as debased.
It is conceived, for example, with neither shape nor form, as simultaneously perfectly still and constantly moving, as both larger than the largest thing and smaller than the smallest, because the words that describe shape, movement, size, or other qualities always create dichotomies, and Tao is always a unity.
While the Tao cannot be expressed, Taoism holds that it can be known, and its principles can be followed. Much of Taoist writing focusses on the value of following the Tao – called Te (virtue) – and of the ultimate uselessness of trying to understand or control Tao outright. This is often expressed through yin and yang arguments, where every action creates a counter-action as a natural, unavoidable movement within manifestations of the Tao.
In terms of western philosophy, the concept of Tao would be considered immanent, but it is a universal immanence that has no strict comparison to the normal (western) use of the term. There is nothing transcendent about Tao, no part of it that is separate from the universe.
Hansen states that the identification of “Taoism” as such first occurred in the early Han Dynasty when dao-jia was identified as a single school.
The most important aspects of Tao are its unremarkable, unnoticed, everyday workings – “the softest thing in the world overcomes the hardest” (TTC chapter 43). Many places in the Tao Te Ching point out that dramatic, enticing or noteworthy events may catch the eye and assume significance, but that it is the slow, slight, unobserved and continuous movement of the manifestations of Tao that actually accomplish things.
I-Kuan Tao, also Yi Guan Dao, or usually initialized as IKT is a new religious movement that originated in twentieth-century China. It incorporates much older elements from Confucianism, Taoism, and Chinese Buddhism, and recognizes the validity of non-Chinese religious traditions such as Christianity and Islam as well. For this reason it is often classified as a syncretistic or syncretic sect, along with other similar religions in the Way of Former Heaven (Xian Tian Dao) family.
The Tao Te Ching is fundamental to the Taoist school (Dàojiā 道家) of Chinese philosophy and strongly influenced other schools, such as Legalism and Neo-Confucianism.