- the three Abrahamic faiths of Judaism, Christianity, and Islam
- the humanist/ethical teachings of Confucianism.
- the most ancient and most diverse religion—Hinduism,
- Buddhism, which emerged out of Hinduism.
We've explored an essential spiritual truth from each of these traditions: Judaism: Justice; Christianity: Love; Islam: Surrender; Confucianism: Right Relationships; Hinduism: Acceptance; and Buddhism: Compassion.
I've argued, directly and indirectly, for Third Millennium eclecticism—a postmodern universalism that recognizes that each religion contains truths, but no one religion has all the truths. So why not visit all the religions and prove what is good in each and then hold fast to that goodness?
Religion is a human instinct. We're hardwired for and create cultures that promote religion, which in my functional definition is about meaning. Religion is embedded in human nature, because we need and create meaning—layers of meaning. Religion is the means and results of making meaning.
It's fitting that the final essential religious truth we'll look at in this series is Taoism's notion of the Way. Religion is a human way (first nature or instinct) and to accept this and to work with this natural way is the means to success and happiness.
Taoism is the most curious/enigmatic of the world religions. Probably you aren't acquainted with it directly, though you may know something about it through Zen Buddhism. Zen is what happened when Chinese Taoism met Indian Buddhism and moved to Japan.
Taoism has two faces: One aspect, Philosophical Taoism is the "pure" form that passes from the sage Lao Tse (reputedly born 604 B.C.E.), through successor sages, most notably Chuang Tse around whom many stories are collected. A second face, Popular Taoism, which is what the masses over millennia practiced, is heavily brocaded by magic, superstition, and tradition. The contemporary scholar and popularizer of world religions, Huston Smith in his classic Religions of Man dealt harshly with Popular Taoism. He wrote, "To pass from the lofty heights [of Philosophical Taoism to Popular Taoism] is like passing from a crystal mountain spring to the thick, fetid waters of a stagnant canal. Mysticism becomes mystification and religion is perverted into necromancy and sorcery. There have been long epochs in China's history when Taoism, in its popular form could be characterized as little more than a funeral racket."
So we confine ourselves to Philosophical Taoism. Its origin story is one of my favorites in the annals of world religions. As with most origin stories, what is fact and what is myth/legend isn't clear.
The story involves the sage Lao Tse. Perhaps he was a keeper of records—an archivist— in the native state where he'd been born. He apparently had renown in his own lifetime. Confucius is said to have paid Lao Tse a visit. Confucius called him a dragon and declared, "Who knows how dragons surmount wind and cloud into heaven."
Lao Tse eventually grew more than weary at the ways of the world and how his teachings were summarily ignored. Therefore, he decided to retreat from the world. He mounted a water buffalo and headed west toward what is now Tibet. At Hankao Pass a gatekeeper recognized Lao Tse. The gatekeeper couldn't get Lao Tse to turn back, but did prevail in urging him to write down his wisdom, hi one sitting or perhaps over three days, depending which story you credit, Lao Tse produced 5000 characters that became the slim book called the Tao Te Ching, which translates as The Way and Its Power. And then Lao Tse simply disappeared forever. There's no other book quite like the Tao Te Ching—in content and in influence. I like Lin Yu Tang's judgment of this remarkable book: "It is a ... concentrated essence of old-roguish wisdom. It is, to my mind, the most brilliantly wicked philosophy of self-protection in world literature."
The Tao Te Ching is early political science—advice to a ruler on how to be a successful ruler. Its counsel is contrary to what we Westerners believe we "know." It takes a diametrically opposite position of leadership and power compared to the ruthless "might makes right" advice of Machiavelli's The Prince. (The Tao Te Ching says that "might sows the seeds of its own annihilation."
Though often caricatured as utterly romantic as opposed to realistic, I've always found Lao Tse's advice to be paradoxically on target—true to human nature and therefore essentially realistic. Lao Tse assayed human nature and saw that greed, jealousy, revenge and similar emotions/reactions rise up in the human breast. In the face of such realities, how does a person navigate the world and society to achieve more than mere survival, to reside in it with equanimity, peace, and success? In answer to these general questions, Philosophical Taoism engages in an implied, multi-layered dialectic:
- How can you be safe from being robbed?
* Don't possess anything of value that other persons covet.
· How to rule and be safe from those who are jealous or resentful of your power?
* Be the sort of ruler/leader no one recognizes to be in charge.
- Who wins in the end?
* The one who is alive and has no enemies who may be gaining ground.
Philosophical Taoism uses images to convey how desired circumstance might be attained. It talks of the Valley Spirit—associated with the woman and water. A woman subdues the strength of a man. Water is the humblest element on earth, always seeking the easiest places to flow; yet over time subdues the mighty mountain and reduces its hardest rock into sand. It talks about the uncarved block of wood or stone that is pure potential. It talks about the infant in a similar manner.
I think that the ultimate Taoist teaching story, and the stories abound, involves a butcher and his knife that never needs sharpening. The butcher explains to Duke Wen Hui how he applies the principles of the Tao to his work: "A good cook goes through a knife in a year, because he cuts. An average cook goes through a knife in a month, because he hacks. I have used this knife for nineteen years. It has butchered thousands of oxen, but the blade is still like it's newly sharpened. The joints have openings, and the knife's blade has no thickness. Apply this lack of thickness into the openings, and the moving blade swishes through, with room to spare! That's why after nineteen years, the blade is still like it's newly sharpened." The Tao is something like a butcher's thin knife that moves without resistance through the joints between the bones.
But there is more to the butcher's story. Before describing how he cut where there was nothing, he first related that he did not acquire this skill all at once. When he was first a butcher, for three years he saw nothing but the whole ox. Then he learned to see the ox with his mind rather than his eye. And now whenever the butcher comes to a tricky cut, he pauses, sizes up the situation, and cuts cautiously. Study and caution are embedded in Taoist ways.
Three Meanings of the Tao
Three Meanings of the Tao
The word Tao or the Way has three related meanings: First, it applies to a transcendent Way of an ultimate reality. This Tao is the ground of being—the basis of all existence. In this regard, the Tao of ultimate reality is beyond the human ability to understand. "The Tao that can be conceived is not the real Tao," the Tao Te Ching says. The transcendent Tao can be experienced through mystical insight, but it defies description and more. A famous Taoist epigram declared, "Those who know don't say, and those who say don't know."
A second meaning of the Tao relates to its immanence. As the ground of all being, the Tao is the way of the material universe. It can be discerned in the rhythms and order of Nature. The "world of 10,000 things" derives from the Tao, and it returns to the Tao—in a sense, the Tao makes and destroys the world.
A third meaning looks to human experience. In this regard, the Tao is the way that a person should order his or her life, in accordance with the transcendent and immanent meanings of the universe. This is a complex matter involving experience, intuition, and practice. This is an aesthetic or artful approach to religion that joins insight and action: insight of order and action in accord with that order. This aspect of the Tao is worth our learning.
Rhythms of the Way
Taoism's aesthetic Way is closely related to Nature. Taoism is arguably the most naturalistic of all the great world religions. Through observation and intuition, it draws from Nature and from Human Nature. In this regard, it also offers a corrective to the customary outlook of the West that has seen Nature as an antagonist and the source of existential conflict. The Western outlook has historically been to subdue and conquer Nature, as well as to deny the ego-self. The Taoist outlook has sought to live in harmony with Nature and the self. Taoism has in it a native ecology, in seeing the whole and its rhythms and gently admonishing that human beings find and fit themselves to those rhythms. Power, true power, in the Taoist view, comes from fitting one's self to the Way of the Universe, this world, and human nature.
In its purest philosophical form, Taoism is an interior religion that places great value on the individual and the individual's true success. It radically redefines power and success, drawing from the results—a true happiness centered in equanimity and peace, quietude and freedom from fear, and an ultimate spontaneity that is yet cautious. A person in harmony with the Tao, in whom the Tao flows and who flows with the Tao, appears to be effortless, almost inactive. Yet that person also has discovered in her or himself a power that cannot be defeated, yet does not cause others to act in harmful ways toward that person.
The model Taoist reposes in the vastness of the world, knows and practices the deep power of Nature, is nonplussed by the customary distractions and distresses of society, and is truly content. Such a perspective leads to a certain playfulness toward the customary social norms and behaviors. This is the quality Lin Yu Tang called "roguish."
I've always found Taoism curiously contemporary, despite its twenty-five hundred year lineage. This results from its naturalism and native ecology. It emphasizes personal observation and experience. It tends toward simplicity and natural grace. It also sees the world in relative terms like postmodernism and deconstructionist philosophy. The Taoist symbol—the circle with yin and yang, and the dots of yang in yin and yin in yang—is a compelling representation of the relativism of values and the identity of contraries. Taoism has a wonderful sense of humor, centered in the surprise and delight we experience through paradox and irony.
Perhaps it's helpful to see Taoism as a spiritual response to an aspect of human nature that many religions are too sober and conformist to accept. Lin Yu Tang, a popularizer of Chinese culture in the mid years of the twentieth century described Taoism's appeal in terms of its playfulness and nonconformity (1935):
There are people who do not wear or kowtow to the official buttons. Man has a deeper nature in him, which Confucianism does not quite touch. Confucianism, in the strict sense of the word, is too decorous, too reasonable, too correct. Man has a hidden desire to go about with disheveled hair, which Confucianism does not quite permit. The man who enjoys slightly rebellious hair and bare feet goes to Taoism. ... Taoism is the romantic school of Chinese thought. ... Taoism is the playing mood of the Chinese people, as Confucianism is their working mood. That accounts for the fact that every Chinese is a Confucianist when he is successful and a Taoist when he is a failure. The naturalism of Taoism is a balm that soothes the wounded Chinese soul.
In the scheme of the great world religions, Taoism is unique in its encompassing naturalism and its intuitive romanticism, though it still maintains notions of transcendence and of an ultimate reality.
I've long been influenced by the seemingly contrary ways of Philosophical Taoism.
I love the roguish insights that invite me to question tradition, to be playful and even irreverent, to repose in a simplicity that always waits.
I love the paradox and whimsy that brush against truths that can't be expressed.
I love the resonance I have for the famous query Chuang Tse uttered when he woke from a dream and was momentarily in a twilight state of consciousness: "Am I Chuang Tse dreaming I am a butterfly. Or am I a butterfly dreaming I Chuang Tse?" If you intuitively grasp a meaning in this conundrum, if it gives you delight and causes you to think, you are, at least, a little, a natural Taoist.
If you intuit—even though you may not practice it—a way of simple living, hidden perhaps by the desires and distractions of society and even mocking them, then the Tao Te Ching is a book you should consult, that more and more you will navigate a powerful and paradoxical way of success, because it is true to nature and human nature.
