On our journey

In the priceless granted Time

                                of Eternity,

Guided by the Brightest Star,

We travel an ever-changing viewed

                                Journey,

To Bethlehem Afar.

                                                               

“Hello! are you going to the other Shore?

        Look here, so many Boats for you to choose.

                                                                Choose One, not Two.

                                                                                           If you do

                                                Put each foot in Two Boats

                                                Soon you’ll find yourself

                                                                Not  a-Sail

                                                                But a-Float!”

                                                Said the Liar Rook,

                                                                Not Bear Pooh.

“Rest Your Mind

                Calm down Your Nerves

                                Put away

                                                The pills and herbs …. “

                                                                                Said Rose Li, “Let us do Tai Ji.”

What is Daoism? (part three)

PASSAGES FROM HERRLEE G. CREEL

The convenient ambiguity of the Lao Tzu was exploited to the full in what is sometimes called Neo-Taoism and sometimes called religious Taoism. This movement – one hesitates to call it a school – was in itself complex and various, including both ignorant religious fanatics and highly cultivated scholars. It appears to have arisen close to the beginnings of the Christian Era, and taken form during the first several centuries AD.

A distinctive name for this kind of Taoism is badly needed. Both “Neo-Taoism” and “religious Taoism” are somewhat ambiguous. This kind of Taoism, in its varying manifestations, is marked by one constant aim: the achievement of immortality. The goal is to become a “hsien” a Taoist immortal. In Chinese works written as early as the first century BC we find its practices called “hsien tao” … “the way of the hsien”. I propose to call this doctrine “Hsien Taoism”, to distinguish it from philosophical Taoism.

The immortality in question was a perpetuation of the physical body. It might be possible, by special means, for one already in the tomb to be resurrected, but best of all was during life to become a “hsien”, forever deathless and ageless. Many ways, “tao”, were believed to conduce to that happy state. One of the most important was to take drugs, sometimes herbal but more frequently, it seems, the products of alchemical manipulations. Complex techniques involving breath control and gymnastics, which have been compared to the Hindu yoga, are prominent. One should not eat any of the five grains. He must repent his sins, practice virtue (including such Confucian virtues as filial piety and benevolence), and give to the poor. A single bad action will wipe out an accumulation of 1,199 good ones. Varying emphasis was given to sexual practices which curiously combined licence with austerity. Feats of magic and charms played a prominent part in Hsien Taoism; mirrors were potent talismans, and many of the bronze mirrors that have come down to us were no doubt considered magical. In a series of heavenly palaces deities (in many cases identified with stars) function as “T’ien kuan”, “Heavenly officers”, in a graded hierarchy. A “hsien” who goes up to heaven must take a lower place, since he has no seniority; this is why some prefer to stay on earth. Furthermore, this whole spiritual hierarchy has its exact counterpart in spirits living inside the body of every human being. There were periodic collective ceremonies designed to achieve various ends. One important objective, in Hsien Taoism, was to avoid or abbreviate the tortures of hell.

The differences between Hsien Taoism and philosophic Taoism are striking, to say the least. The mere idea of all this toiling for immortality is repugnant to that of “wu wei”, not striving. The Confucian moral tone, and concern for rank in a heavenly hierarchy, conflict with the moral indifference and robust anarchism of Taoist philosophy. As for the idea of hell, it is doubtful that the authors of the Chuang Tzu ever heard of it, but if they had it would undoubtedly have struck them as exceedingly funny. Yet both doctrines are called Taoism, and the distinction between them is sometimes made poorly if at all. How did this situation come about?

There are many views, but most explanations are variations on a single theme. It is generally believed that in some manner Taoist philosophy gradually took into itself indigenous practices and “superstitions”, absorbed much from Buddhism, and was transformed into Hsien Taoism. Maspero calls this view “superficial”, certainly it leaves a vast amount unexplained.

In my opinion, philosophic Taoism (including both the “contemplative” and the “purposive” aspects) and Hsien Taoism not only were never identical; their associations even, have been minimal. At an undetermined date, perhaps around 300 BC, there arose what we might call a cult of immortality. Also around 300 BC, and perhaps in the same areas, Taoist philosophy arose. The cult and the philosophy seem to have been almost entirely distinct until perhaps as late as the middle of Former Han times. During the Han dynasty those seeking immortality gradually took over the name of Taoism (perhaps for the respectability it afforded) and much of the jargon of “purposive” Taoism, but they did not take over Taoist philosophy. In Latter Han times Hsien Taoists took over Buddhist practices to develop a popular Taoist religion. Although there was some miscegenation, Taoist philosophers have commonly considered the quest for immortality to be fatuous or worse, and some Hsien Taoists have reciprocated the lack of cordiality. The evidence for this hypothesis is voluminous. Here it can only be summarised.

From the Shang oracle bones we know that already in the second millennium BC it was believed that spirits of the dead might harm the living, and apparently influence their health. From an early day there were individuals known as “Wu”, often called “shamans”, who held séances with spirits and were believed to be able to heal the sick. The invention of medicine is attributed to a certain Wu. From healing the sick and forestalling death temporarily, it is only a jump to the idea of forestalling death permanently. Wu are said to have been especially numerous in the southern state of Ch’u, and also in Ch’i which occupied roughly the area of modern Shantung Province.

Wu are important in the background of Hsien Taoism, and so are magicians, who also flourished in Ch’i. The Historical Records says that magicians of the states of Ch’i and Yen, claiming command of the art of immortality, “transmitted but could not understand” the methods of the philosopher Tsou Yen, whose name is associated with the rise of the doctrine of “wu hsing” or “five forces”, and with the “yin yang” theory. It also seems to be in Ch’i, and again not far from 300 BC, that the first mention occurs of the Yellow Emperor. Although he appeared so late, his fame spread with great rapidity. His name, also, is linked with medicine. He was early, though by no means universally, associated with longevity and immortality. He came to be regarded as the earliest ruler of China, and a patriarch of Hsien Taoism.

Since Chuang Tzu is believed to have lived in the latter half of the fourth century BC, and at least two important philosophical Taoists are said to have lived and written at the capital of Ch’i at this time, this has been pointed out as a striking association between the origins of what I call Hsien Taoism, and philosophical Taoism.

The critical testing ground is the Chuang Tzu, which a number of scholars have believed to be shot through with the search for immortality. This is largely because there is a good deal of the Taoist insistence that most men, by their unnaturally hectic way of life, not only destroy their piece of mind but shorten their lives. It is of interest to note that the medical profession is saying the same thing today. There is some emphasis on longevity in the Chuang Tzu, but every student of bronze inscriptions knows that this is one of the most ancient and universal Chinese desires. Yet even this is ridiculed, in the Chuang Tzu, as stupid preoccupation with the vicissitudes of one’s body.

The prevailing attitude in the Chuang Tzu is that “no one is so long-lived as a child who dies in infancy, and P’eng Tzu [supposed to have lived for many centuries] died young; heaven and earth were born together with me, and all things with me are one.” Time after time we are told that for the enlightened Taoist both death and life are matters of indifference, and in some passages death is even called desirable. Despite the fact that Hsien Taoists later took the Yellow Emperor and Lao Tzu as their patriarchs, in the Chuang Tzu both of these sages are quoted as advising that no importance be attached to either life or death.

Various elements later found in Hsien Taoism are referred to – often derogatorily. A sorcerer, Wu, is elaborately derided. One passage which describes the practice of breath control and gymnastics has often been cited as showing that the Chuang Tzu advocates such exercises. But in fact, this passage says that these are the pursuits of those who are merely “avid for longevity”; the enlightened man, it avers, does not bother with such practices, but regards death calmly, as a natural event. Already in the Chuang Tzu we see the conflict between the immortality cult and Taoist philosophy.

What, then, is “Taoism”? Clearly, the term has been used to embrace the most diverse doctrines. They may be grouped, in the most general way, under two headings. On the one hand we have philosophic Taoism, a philosophy saying much that is still pertinent even in this day of great sophistication and scientific complexity. This philosophy has not always been studied with the seriousness it deserves, in part because it has often been regarded as a system of mystical incomprehensibilities. Another part of the reason is that it has sometimes been confused with the other kind of Taoism, which I suggest should be known as Hsien Taoism. The doctrines that fall under this heading, aiming at the achievement of immortality by a variety of means, have their roots in ancient Chinese magical practices and an immortality cult. Hsien Taoism also incorporates elements from Confucianism, Moism and Buddhism. But there is one element that we might expect to find which is completely absent from Hsien Taoism. That is the central insight of philosophical Taoism.

What is Daoism? (part two)

PASSAGES FROM HERRLEE G. CREEL

There is another aspect of philosophical Taoism, which I propose to call “purposive.” I believe that “contemplative” Taoism represents the philosophy in its original purity, while “purposive” Taoism was a secondary development. It is clear enough, for instance, that the poise and inner calm that may be derived from the attitude of contemplative Taoism elevates him who holds it above the struggling mass of harried men, and may even give a psychological advantage in dealing with them. Very well, says the “purposive” Taoist; cultivate this attitude as a means to power! Be without desire in order to gain the things that you desire. It is by not venturing to put himself forward that one is able to gain the first place. Thus a sage is able, by means of the Tao, to become chief of all the ministers. “He who wishes to be above the people must speak as though he were below them … It is just because he does not contend that no one in the world is able to contend with him.”

This tendency to treat the Tao as a method of control, of acquiring power, occurs sporadically in the Chuang Tzu, but it is far more prominent in the text that is known both as the Lao Tzu and as the Tao Te Ching. Traditionally the Lao Tzu was held to have been written by an older contemporary of Confucius. Most critical scholars now believe that it was composed much later. And a considerable number, of whom I am one, believe that the Lao Tzu was probably put together somewhat later than the earliest parts of the Chuang Tzu were written.

There was a great tendency, from at least the third century BC on, to attribute many sayings to the vague character known as Lao Tzu, “the Old Master”. We even find good Confucian sayings that occur in the Analects repeated almost verbatim, prefaced by the words, “Lao Tzu said”. At some point someone brought together many of the best of these sayings, and may have collected and written other materials to go with them, and made the book called the Lao Tzu. The fact that it is an anthology accounts for the large number of repetitions in the text.

The editing was excellent and gives, on the whole, a remarkable appearance of homogeneity. This is partly because the materials selected are always terse and aphoristic, commonly cryptic, and often rhymed. The Lao Tzu includes some of our finest expressions of Taost philosophy, as well as some trivia. It has much of the “contemplative”, but more of the “purposive” aspect. Thus whereas the Chuang Tzu is in the main politically indifferent or even anarchistic, the Lao Tzu gives a great deal of advice to kings and feudal lords and ministers on how to get and hold power. It is less concerned with the vision of the Tao as the great whole, and more with the Tao as a technique of control.

The terse and cryptic nature of the sayings in the Lao Tzu had consequences not foreseen by their authors. They could be, and were, interpreted in various and even opposite ways. The recently published translation by the late Professor J. J. L. Duyvendak aroused wide interest by its rendering of the first six characters of the Lao Tzu, which gave them a meaning quite opposed to the usual interpretation and new, in so far as I am aware, among translations. Yet Duyvendak’s interpretation is quite old in Chinese literature; it was evidently made by a wing of Taoist thought that leaned heavily towards Legalism.

What is Daoism? (part one)

PASSAGES FROM HERRLEE G. CREEL

Like a number of other scholars I believe that the Chuang Tzu was written, in large part at least, not far from 300 BC and that it contains our finest exposition of Taoist thinking. As the Chuang Tzu describes the Tao it is not merely a substance and a thing. It is the only substance and the only thing, for it is the totality of all things whatsoever. It includes, as a persistent questioner was told to his embarrassment, ordure and urine. While it always seems to be in flux, the balance of its forces is forever the same, so that in a larger sense it is unchanging. And it is absolutely indivisible. Since it is indivisible, it follows that it cannot be described in words or even comprehended by thought. It also follows that apparent lesser objects, like you and me, exist only as inseparable parts of the great whole, and we are as old, and as young, as the heavens and the earth. There is no point, then, in feverish attempts to move parts of the Tao from one place to another. The enlightened man knows that all things are safe “in the one treasury”; he leaves his gold in the fastness of the mountains, his pearls in the depths of the sea. Nor is there any cause for concern as to one’s own fate. “In the universe,” the Chuang Tzu tells us, “all things are one. For him who can but realize his indissoluble unity with the whole, the parts of his body mean no more than so much dust and dirt, and death and life, end and beginning, are no more to him than the succession of day and night. They are powerless to disturb his tranquillity.”

Sanskrit scholars will have been reminded of the famous statement of the Upanishads, “That art Thou.” Such resemblances were to play an important role when Buddhism entered China, around the beginning of the Christian Era.

In the Chuang Tzu, as for the Confucians, Tao denoted method as well as entity. But a method of doing what? There is not, in this philosophy, a basis for any very positive action. The Tao is unknowable, in its essence, and the most enlightened sage is ignorant. Morally, Taoist philosophy is completely indifferent. All things are relative. “Right” and “wrong” are just words which may apply to the same thing, depending upon which partial viewpoint we see it from. For each individual there is a different “true” and a different “false”. From the transcendent viewpoint of the Tao all such things are irrelevant. To advocate such Confucian virtues as benevolence and righteousness is not merely foolish, but likely to do harm, for the advocate betrays an unwarranted and dangerous assurance.

What, then, should one do? “Wu wei”, the Chuang Tzu says, “Do nothing, and everything will be done.” And it is very near to really meaning just that. “The small man sacrifices himself in the pursuit of gain, the superior man devotes his whole existence to the struggle for fame. Their reasons for relinquishing the normal feelings of men and warping their natures are quite different, but in that they abandon the proper human course and give over their whole lives to a strange and unnatural endeavour, they are exactly the same. Therefore it is said, do not be a small man, thus to destroy the very essence of your being. And do not try to be a superior man, either. Follow the natural course. No matter whether crooked or straight, look at all things in the light of the great power of nature that resides within you. Look around you! Attune yourself to the rhythm of the seasons. What difference whether it is called right or wrong. Hold fast to the unfettered wholeness that is yours, carry out your own idea, bend only with the Tao.”

But what, one may ask, does this come to in practice? Very little, it must be admitted. The Chuang Tzu says repeatedly that one should be selfless. But a living being cannot be wholly selfless. At the least one must eat, and this means competition. The Chuang Tzu itself tells us that some critics said that only a dead man could be a good Taoist, in the sense we have been discussing.

This is not the place to expatiate upon the merits of this particular aspect of Taoism. It may be noted however, that while it is quite lacking in any practical program, it has provided a haven of inner strength, a refuge from vicissitude, for great numbers of Chinese from antiquity to the present day. I propose calling this aspect of Taoism “contemplative Taoism”.

On helping others

A Madman after a mad-dream night

   Uttered:

     “God helps those who help themselves –

                And also

     God helps those who help others.”

Help (a joint Force) is doing something not for the Self.

     This joint Force is stronger.

Dao keeps on telling us … The Eternity is all in all.

     Yet, look … how we, the human world, deviate

     ourselves (time, space, being) in such a pitiful way,
     and more so, head on to one another.

“Mind your own business” … a good motto … Western way?

“Sweep the snow in front of your own door only” …. Chinese way.

     We are so afraid to lose.

     Yet, we are losing while we are getting –

     Is it not so? Let us think.

The cock crowing, the Madman became silent.

Zhuang Zi

SELECTIONS TRANSLATED BY THOMAS MERTON

When life was full there was no history

In the age when life on earth was full, no one paid any special attention to worthy men, nor did they single out the man of ability. Rulers were simply the highest branches on the tree, and the people were like deer in the woods. They were honest and righteous without realizing that they were “doing their duty”. They loved each other and did not know that this was “love of neighbour”. They deceived no one yet they did not know that they were “men to be trusted”. They were reliable and did not know that this was “good faith”. They lived freely together giving and taking, and did not know that they were generous. For this reason their deeds have not been narrated. They made no history.

The fighting cock

Chi Hsing Tzu was a trainer of fighting cocks

For King Hsuan.

He was training a fine bird.

The King kept asking if the bird were

Ready for combat.

“Not yet”, said the trainer.

“He is full of fire.

He is ready to pick a fight

With every other bird. He is vain and confident

Of his own strength.”

After ten days, he answered again:

“Not yet. He flares up

When he hears another bird crow.”

After ten more days:

“Not yet. He still gets

That angry look

And ruffles his feathers.”

Again ten days:

The trainer said, “Now he is nearly ready.

When another bird crows, his eye

Does not even flicker.

He stands immobile

Like a cock of wood.

He is a mature fighter.

Other birds

Will take one look at him

And run.”

The man with one foot and the marsh pheasant

King Wen Hsien saw a maimed official

Whose left foot had been cut off –

A penalty in the political game!

“What kind of man,” he cried, “is this one-footed oddity?

How did he get that way? Shall we say

Man did this, or heaven?”

“Heaven,” he said, “this comes from

Heaven, not from man.

When heaven gave this man life, it willed

He should stand out from others

And sent him into politics

To get himself distinguished.

See! One foot! This man is different.”

The little marsh pheasant

Must hop ten times

To get a bite of grain.

She must run a hundred steps

Before she takes a sip of water.

Yet she does not ask

To be kept in a hen run

Though she might have all she desired

Set before her.

She would rather run

And seek her own little living

Uncaged.

The need to win

When an archer is shooting for nothing

He has all his skill.

If he shoots for a brass buckle

He is already nervous.

If he shoots for a prize of gold

He goes blind

Or sees two targets –

He is out of his mind!

His skill has not changed. But the prize

Divides him. He cares.

He thinks more of winning

Than of shooting –

And the need to win

Drains him of power.

Cutting up an ox

Prince Wen Hui’s cook

Was cutting up an ox.

Out went a hand,

Down went a shoulder

He planted a foot,

He pressed with a knee,

The ox fell apart

With a whisper,

The bright cleaver murmured

Like a gentle wind.

Rhythm! Timing!

Like a sacred dance,

Like “The Mulberry Grove”,

Like ancient harmonies!

“Good work! The Prince exclaimed,

“Your method is faultless!”

“Method?” said the cook

Laying aside his cleaver,

“What I follow is Tao

Beyond all methods!

“When I first began

To cut up oxen

I would see before me

The whole ox

All in one mass.

After three years

I no longer saw this mass.

I saw the distinctions.

“But now, I see nothing

With the eye. My whole being

Apprehends.

My senses are idle. The spirit

Free to work without plan

Follows its own instinct

Guided by natural line,

By the secret opening, the hidden space,

My cleaver finds its own way.

I cut through no joint, chop no bone.

“A good cook needs a new chopper

Once a year – he cuts.

A poor cook needs a new one

Every month – he hacks!

“I have used this same cleaver

Nineteen years

It has cut up

A thousand oxen.

Its edge is as keen

As if newly sharpened.

“There are spaces in the joints;

The blade is thin and keen:

When this thinness

Finds that space

There is all the room you need!

It goes like a breeze!

Hence I have this cleaver nineteen years

As if newly sharpened!

“True, there are sometimes

Tough joints. I feel them coming,

I slow down, I watch closely,

Hold back, barely move the blade,

And whump! the part falls away

Landing like a clod of earth.

“Then I withdraw the blade,

I stand still

And let the joy of the work

Sink in.

I clean the blade

And put it away.”

Prince Wan Hui said,

“This is it! My cook has shown me

How I ought to live

My own life!”