TAOISM• Maybe 225 million followers• Yin/Yang far older in Chinese thought than

Taoist/Confucian schools.

"We believe in the formless and eternal Tao, and we recognize all personified deities as being mere human constructs. We reject hatred, intolerance, and unnecessary violence, and embrace harmony, love and learning, as we are taught by Nature. We place our trust and our lives in the Tao, that we may live in peace and balance with the Universe, both in this mortal life and beyond.“--Creed of the Western Reform Taoist Congregation

• Lao Tzu (Tze) are both figures of the “axial age” (800-200 BCE), along with Confucius, Buddha, and Greek progenitors of philosophy.

• Laozi is held to be the author of the Tao de Ching

Laozi (Lao Tze) the “Old Master” on his water buffalo

• Whether he existed or whether the Tao te Ching is a composite work is contested.

• But approximately a contemporary of Confucius and of Greek pre-Socratic philosophers.

Yin Yang

• Taoist symbol. "It represents the balance of opposites in the universe. When they are equally present, all is calm. When one is outweighed by the other, there is confusion and disarray."

Eastern Wisdom by C. Chuh

Compare with:

• Chi Lu asked about serving the spirits. Confucius said, "If you can't yet serve men, how can you serve the spirits?"  Lu said, "May I ask about death?" Confucius said, "If you don't understand what life is, how will you understand death?"

• Confucius said: "If you govern the people legalistically and control them by punishment, they will avoid crime, but have no personal sense of shame. If you govern them by means of virtue and control them with propriety (li), they will gain their own sense of shame, and thus correct themselves."

--Analects 11:11 & 2:3

The Tao Te Ching(Book of the Way and of Virtue)

The Tao: What is it?

• 1. The way of ultimate reality; way of the universe; way of human life. The root source or first-cause of the universe: "that which makes things what they are.”

Metaphors of the Tao: The uncarved block, the baby, the ‘watercourse way’.

• 2. The ‘path’ one should take or follow; nature’s way adopted as a normative guide to one’s conduct.

Mysticism and the Limits of Language and Discursive Understanding

• The Tao as indescribable & mysterious: “The way that can be spoken of is not the everlasting way”---TTC, 1.

• “We look at it and do not see it; Its name is The Invisible. We listen to it and do not hear it; Its Name is The Inaudible. We touch it and do not find it; Its name is The Subtle (or Formless).These three cannot be inquired further into, and hence merge into one….Infinite and boundless, it cannot be given name; It reverts to nothingness…It is the Vague and Eluding.”—TTC, 14.

• “A bait is used to catch fish. When you have gotten the fish, you can forget about the bait. A rabbit trap is used to catch rabbits. When the rabbits are caught, you can forget about the trap. Words are used to express meaning. When you understand the meaning, you can forget about the words. Where can I find a man who forgets about words in order that I may talk with him?” --Zhuangzi

Mysticism in the ‘coincidence of opposites’

• We find aspects of one in the other (being & nonbeing; yin & yang; the “dots” on the yin/yang symbol)

• Western thought more a “conflict dualism,” Eastern more “complementary contraries.” Change in Taoism seen as “cyclical reversal” between Yin and Yang poles.

• The Tao as both the ‘higher synthesis’ of complementary opposites, and as the unitary source out of which they are differentiated.

Cosmogony in the Tao Te Ching:

“Something undifferentiated was born before heaven and earth; still and silent, standing alone and unchanging, going through cycles unending, able to be mother to the world. I do not know its name; I label it the Way. Imposing on it a name, I call it Great”—TTC, 25

• “Tao produced the One. The One produced the two. The two produced the three. And the three produced the ten thousand things”—TTC, 42

Taoism and ethics

1. Wu Wei (actionless action i.e. let nature take its course)

2. Virtue (te) in Taoist perspective

3. Intellectual humility as an ethical virtue

1. Wu Wei: Actionless Action

• “The Way of heaven helps and does not harm. The Way for humans is to act without contention.”—TTC, 81

• “Tao invariably takes no action, and yet there is nothing left undone.” "The tao of heaven does not strive, and yet it overcomes. It does not speak, and yet it is answered....The world is ruled by non-action, not by action.“—TTC, 37

• “The sage never strives for the great, and thereby the great is achieved.”---TTC, 34

• “Do non-doing, strive for non-striving, savor the flavorless, regard the small as important, make much of little, repay enmity with virtue.”—TTC, 63

“Be water, my friend!”—Bruce Lee

• “Stiffness is thus a companion of death, flexibility a companion of life” (TTC,76).

• “Nothing in the world is more flexible and yielding than water. Yet when it attacks the firm and the strong, none can withstand it, because they have no way to change it” (TTC, 78).

• It is because they do not contend that no one can contend with them”---TTC, 22. “The best person is like water...It is because he does not compete that he is without reproach”—TTC, 8

• The ‘way of the intercepting fist’: of attacking but turning the opponent’s energy against him .

• “Using no way as way; having no limitations as limitation”: This Bruce Lee wore as an insignia medallion for the rest of his short life, his own unique appropriation of the Taoist ideal of actionless action.

• http://www.metacafe.com/watch/23744/bruce_lee_lost_interview/

2. Virtue

• “The Way is always uncontrived, yet there’s nothing it doesn’t do. If lords and monarchs could keep to it, all beings would evolve spontaneously…By not wanting there is calm, and the world will straighten itself.” —TTC, 37

• “The Sage wants to have no wants…The sage embraces unity as a model for the world.” — TTC, 22.

• “Cultivate it in yourself, and the virtue is real; cultivate it at home, and that virtue is abundant; cultivate it in the nation, and that virtue is rich; cultivate it in the world, and that virtue is universal” —TTC, 54

• Habituation restores natural virtue: “When there is a motive to be virtuous, there is no virtue” —TTC

‘Stoic’ temperament in the face of fate

• Laozi states, “All that happens without us knowing why is destiny…For one who trusts destiny, and his mind, there is nothing agreeable or offensive.” (232).

• The Taoist and the Stoic: Life is serene if we accept things as they come; accept changes as natural. “Sorrow is merely a state of mind and may not be warranted by the circumstances. Hence whether or not you feel sad … is all in the mind.” (237).

3. Intellectual humility

• “Those who know do not say; those who say do not know. Close the senses, shut the doors; blunt the sharpness, resolve the complications; harmonize the light, assimilate to the world”—TTC, 56

The limits of knowledge

• Knowing is not like ‘mirroring’ an objective reality (i.e., what Heaven or nature makes). It is always inevitably relational and situational. But often in the West we take knowing as mirroring, and the human ‘contribution’ as merely tarnishing or clouding the mirror.

• Just as Taoist ethics rejects altruistic rules and expectations, making place for greater individuality, the Taoist approach to knowledge is too psychologically acute to accept knowledge as a mere ‘mirroring’ of nature. As with the philosopher William James, ‘The trail of the human serpent’ over what we take as truth and knowledge is too apparent.

The “Three Sages” from a Taoist Perspective

• 1) K'ung Fu-tse (mispronounced "Confucius") - considered life to be sour. He felt that the world was a disorderly place, which had to be controlled.

2) Buddha - considered life to be bitter. He saw the world as full of pain and illusion, full of attachments and traps. He felt that we must work spiritually to rise above these things.

3) Lao-tse - considered life to be perfect & wonderful as is. He saw a natural harmony that could be experienced by anyone at anytime. He believed the world to be a teacher of valuable lessons, and that we should embrace the wonder of every moment.

Chinese Multiple Religious Participation

• A history fairly harmonious interplay (sporadically upset) between the three major religions of China. Example of sharing the community temple, rather than ‘jealously’ guarding it & excluding one others.

• “The co-existence of Confucianism, Taoism, and Buddhism is not merely an existence side by side in the same land, they also coexist in the same mind. That is, the same individual may subscribe to all three value systems at the same time…People of MRP practice more than one religion with a recognition that these are different religions. They do it without making an effort to integrate them into one single religion on the basis of some common tenets.”—C. Li

Science and/or Mysticism?

• “Mystics understand the roots of the Tao but not its branches; scientists understand its branches but not its roots. Science does not need mysticism and mysticism does not need science; but man needs both.” —Taoist saying/ F. Capra, The Tao of Physics

• “Sometimes people ask if religion and science are not opposed to one another. They are in the sense that the thumb and fingers of my hand are opposed to one another. It is an opposition by means of which anything can be grasped” –W. Gragg in God for the 21st Century

• “The most beautiful and most profound emotion we can experience is the sensation of the mystical…It is the source of all art and science…The religious geniuses of all ages have been distinguished by this kind of religious feeling, which knows no dogma and no God conceived in man’s image….Science without religion is lame, religion without science is blind.”--Albert Einstein, The World as I See It (1934)

Western science and Eastern mysticism?

• Niels Bohr’s self-designed ‘coat of arms,’ featuring Yin/Yang and “contraries in complementarity.”

• “It is wrong to think that the task of physics is to find out how Nature is. Physics concerns what we can say about Nature.”

• “The opposite of a correct statement is a false statement. But the opposite of a profound truth may well be another profound truth.”

• At the micro-level, quantum physics tells us there’s no ultimate substance-brick of the universe. “It is no more particulars than energy-packets; nor more energy packets than particles…Both ‘this’ and ‘that’ are different ways for the same entity to be” (C. Li)

Stayin’ in ‘the pivot of the Tao’

• “When there is no more separation of ‘this’ and ‘that,’ it is called the pivot of the Tao. At the pivot in the center of the circle one can see the infinite in all things.”—Zhuangzi

• “To know the Tao is not to discriminate against alternatives, but to be open to them” (C. Li). Staying at the pivot of the ‘potter’s wheel of Heaven’ is called “letting both alternatives proceed.”

• “Everything is a ‘that,’ and everything is a ‘this.’ You cannot see it as a ‘this’ if you are from the viewpoint of ‘that’; you see it as a ‘this’ when you are from the viewpoint of ‘this’… Thus the sage does not bother with these distinctions but sees all things the way they are….” “The Way is the pivot of all things”—TTC 47

Ch’i Energy• Each person must nurture the Ch'i (air, breath)

that has been given to them. Taoists strongly promote health and vitality.

• Tai chi as an art of the balance of forces • Tai chi works on all parts of the body, to

"stimulate the central nervous system, lowers blood pressure, relieves stress and gently tones muscles without strain. It also enhances digestion, elimination of wastes and the circulation of blood. Moreover, tai chi's rhythmic movements massage the internal organs and improve their functionality." Traditional Chinese medicine teaches that illness is caused by blockages or lack of balance in the body's "chi" (intrinsic energy). Tai Chi is believed to balance this energy flow.

Acupuncture & Meridians

Y/Y and the Five Elements

Chinese acupuncture• Cultural “incommensurability” (‘no

common measure’) between Western and Eastern explanations of pain.

• Ch’i energy travels throughout the body along channels, or “meridians”.

• The method of selecting points along for acupuncture anesthesiology: "where a meridian traverses, there is a place amenable to treatment.”

• This doesn’t jibe with Western explanations; from the Western perspective, its success is an “anomaly.”

CTM & Western Medicine• Different attitudes to acupuncture highlight contrasting

views of the the physician. The “gardener” and the “mechanic.”

• Mechanic: structure determines function, and structure is purely physical. Focus on parts to be fixed.

• Gardener: Patient is viewed as a complete integration of body and mind.

• Theory-dominant vs. practice-dominant orientations. The Chinese generally more concerned about efficacy than about explanation.

• CTM is “holistic” in directing itself to the person as a physiological and psychological unity. Analyze not the sickness but rather understand the sick person to restore balance and health.

• “Eastern medicine’s traditional view of the body takes the body’s mode in the opposite direction from modern medicine’s procedure of anatomy first, then physiology, and only finally psychology.”--Yuasa