Chinese thought, Lao-tse, Taoist writers

The Taoist writers sometimes employ the word in similar senses; for example: "The way of Heaven is to diminish superabundance and to supplement deficiency. Not so the way of man; he takes from those who have not enough to add to his own superabundance"; but in general Tao has in this school a different and distinctive meaning. It is not a descriptive or circumscriptive name, but a symbol for the nameless. "The Tao (way) that can be trodden is not the enduring and unchanging Tao. The name (Tao) that is named is not the enduring and unchanging name." The nearest approach to a definition of what it stands for is in the twenty-fifth chapter of the Tao-teh-king:

"There was a Something, undifferentiated and yet perfect, before heaven and earth came into being. So still, so incorporeal! It alone abides and changes not. It pervades all, but is not endangered. It may be regarded as the mother of all things. I know not its name; if I must designate it, I call it Tao. Striving to give it a name, I call it great; great, I call it transcending; transcending, I call it far off; far off, I call it returning. . . . Man takes his norm from earth; earth from heaven; heaven from Tao; the Tao from itself."

Chinese thought had hitherto taken the world as it found it, without asking how it came to be. In Lao-tse a speculative thinker appeared who tried to penetrate to the ultimate reality behind the world of appearance, the one beneath the many, the changeless being from which all becoming proceeds. Before the Most High Lord (Shang-ti), is a first principle (the αρχη of the Greek philosophers), which in its essential being is unknowable. As source of all being, ratio essendi, it is itself beyond being: "All existences in the universe sprang from Being (Tao, as active); Being itself sprang from Non-Being (Tao, as absolute)." It produces and nourishes all things, "by its outflowing operation," and to it, as to their origin, all things, when
they have run their course, return. It is the end as well as the beginning of all existences. "We look at it and do not see it, and we name it 'the Equable'; we listen to it and do not hear it, and we name it 'the Inaudible'; we try to grasp it and do not get hold of it, and we name it 'the Subtle.' With these three qualities it cannot be made the subject of any descriptions; and hence we blend them together and obtain the One."

Though the Absolute in itself is unknowable, its operations in the phenomenal world are within men's knowledge. Intelligent observation discovers in these operations a constant characteristic, a way, or method, of nature, in which we may discern to the character of the Being from whom nature and all its operations proceed. It is this which makes Tao the most appropriate word for the unnamable.

The quality which most impressed Lao-tse in the orderly operations of nature was that they are accomplished without effort or purpose. The Tao does everything without doing anything. It is the way of Heaven not to strive, yet it overcomes. It produces and sustains all, yet claims nothing to itself. Heaven and Earth endure because they do not live of, or for, themselves. Equally little are they prompted by benevolence: "they treat all things like grassdogs." This method of the universe is the norm for man. He should not merely take example from it and pattern his conduct after it: he should make it the inner law of his life, from which conduct spontaneously flows. Then he not only knows the Tao, but has it; the cosmic principle is in him ethical principle; his life is nature. This is the foundation of Taoist ethics and politics, which form the subject of the second part (Teh, 'Virtue') of the Tao-teh-king.

The corner-stone is the doctrine of "not doing," inaction Wu-wei). The common man thinks that for his own improvement or the bettering of the world he must always be doing. He reflects, plans, toils, strives, defeats himself, and knows not why. The wise man takes the opposite course: he will have no desires or ambitions, no aims, no purposeful and energetic activities; then everything will go right of itself. When man, with his conceit of wisdom and his selfish will, ceases to interfere with the order of the world and impede it, he will find that it goes on perfectly without him. The "practical" reformer, with his schemes for saving society, was therefore the most impractical of men; Confucius would have seemed to Lao-tse a fussy meddler in the affairs of the universe, while Lao-tse would have been, in the eyes of Confucius, a paradoxical dreamer.

The ethics of such a system are necessarily quietistic. The Taoist cultivates inaction; he is silent even about the Tao; he teaches without words; he renounces learning and wisdom; he has an air of indecision and irresoluteness, a vacant and stupid look. Gentleness marks his dealings under all circumstances; it is one of the three jewels of character, and overcomes where violence fails. He has learned that weakness is strength and strength weakness. "There is nothing in the world more soft and weak than water, yet for attacking things that are firm and strong nothing surpasses it."

The wise man humbles himself and is exalted, while the aspiring man asserts himself but is not honoured. "There is no guilt greater than to sanction ambition; no calamity greater than to be discontented with one's lot; no fault greater than the desire for gain. The sufficiency of contentment is an enduring and unchanging sufficiency."

The third jewel, with gentleness and humility, is frugality; and as by the way of opposites true courage springs from gentleness and humility leads to honour, so the counterpart of frugality is liberality. "The wise man does not accumulate. The more he expends for others, the more does he possess of his own; the more he gives to others, the more does he have himself."

Native Chinese philosophy, Confucianism, Taoism

The only independent system of native Chinese philosophy which ever seriously disputed the supremacy of Confucianism is Taoism. The founder of this system was Lao-tse, an older contemporary of Confucius, of whom almost nothing credible is related except that he filled the post of librarian, or keeper of the archives, at the court of Chou.

An anecdote narrated by the historian Szĕ-ma Ts'ien relates that Confucius, on his visit to the court of Chou at Loh-yang, tried to get some information about ancient usages from the aged keeper of the archives, and got instead a pointed rebuke of his antiquarian curiosity about men whose bones had long since mouldered to dust, of his lofty airs, his extravagant aims, and his multifarious activities. The interview made such an impression on Confucius that he compared Lao-tse to the dragon, whose mysterious flight through the sky on wind and cloud baffles comprehension. The story, which evidently comes from a Taoist source, is historically worthless; but it expresses well enough the bewildering effect of the teachings of Lao-tse on the Confucian mind. "The adherents of Lao-tse reject the school of K'ung-tse ( Confucius), and the adherents of K'ung-tse reject Lao-tse. At variance in fundamental principles, they cannot agree."

To Lao-tse is attributed the Tao-teh-king, which holds the place of authority among the Taoist books. The legend of its origin is that as Lao-tse was abandoning the sinking state of Chou, the warden of the frontier pass persuaded him before his departure to commit his principles to writing. This he did in a compass of little more than five thousand words, and, leaving the book with the keeper, wandered on and disappeared from mortal ken. Some critics have not only rejected this story, but have denied that the Tao-teh-king is the work of Lao-tse at all, though it may contain some savings of his preserved by oral tradition. More conservative scholars regard the book as substantially embodying the teachings of Lao-tse, perhaps set down by a disciple rather than by the master himself, and not without interpolations by later hands.

The Tao-teh-king consists of two parts, entitled respectively Tao and Teh, and has been divided by commentators into eighty-one short chapters. The first part is predominatingly metaphysical, the second ethical and political; but no logical plan is followed. The book is very obscure, in consequence partly of extreme conciseness, but still more because the author is struggling to express ideas for which the language provided no terms--ideas, moreover, of a kind for which words are at best an inadequate vehicle.

The fundamental problem of interpretation confronts the translator in the very title of the book. Tao is literally 'way'; then, like corresponding words in many languages, 'course, method, order, norm.' In the Confucian literature the word is used of "the way of Heaven," especially in its dealing with men, the moral order of the world, which is manifest also in the physical order. It is used also of the right way of human life, the way which Heaven approves, the path of reason, of principle, of truth. Finally it denotes the rational and moral principle by which conduct is guided.

religions in China: Taoism, Confucianism, and Buddhism

To one who is used to the more or less tidy compartments of religion in the West, and on that analogy has little difficulty in finding his way about Islam, or even Hinduism, the question of what a man's religion is in China is at first rather confusing. One is generally told that there are three religions in China: Taoism, Confucianism, and Buddhism, but one soon finds that more often than not a man cannot be labelled as belonging to one or the other, but may very well have in his make-up beliefs attributable to all three.

Treatises on Taoism, Confucianism or Buddhism are easily enough available, but anyone with an inquiring turn of mind will feel as frustrated as I did by the difficulty of discovering how the many things of a plainly religious character fit in.

One of the first things I noticed was a little shrine at the threshold of almost every shop. There you will see either a wooden tablet painted with a few characters in gold, or perhaps just a piece of paper with the characters printed on it. Before it is some small vessel with joss-sticks. Joss-sticks are always burnt in threes, and candles, so much used in temples, in pairs.

This is the shrine of the Land God, To Tei, one of the most popular gods. He sits at the door of your house to protect it. In the New Territories a larger edition of him is always to be found at the entrance to a village, and generally he is represented by a smooth stone, though sometimes in idol form. Every death of an adult in the village has to be promptly reported to him and he is often asked to protect children. Their names are written on a piece of red paper which is placed in his shrine with food, wine and incense.

To Tei is generally said to be Taoist, and as Taoism is a philosophy of nature in which man takes his place as part of the landscape with the rocks, the trees, the animals and birds and butterflies, the conception of To Tei fits into the picture well enough. I felt, however, that To Tei, like so many other features of Chinese religion, was something older than any philosopher's creed and belonged in fact to the religion of man's infancy, the almost instinctive beliefs with which primitive man is endowed.

Another god who is common to almost every Chinese home is Tso Kwan, the Kitchen God. His shrine is usually in a niche near the stove, represented by golden characters on a red tablet. He is considered to be fat and jovial as a result of good living, but is of great importance because once a year he visits the other gods to report on the behaviour of all the members of the household. Before he sets out on New Year's Eve the family regale him with a feast when large quantities of honey are given to him. This is to try and seal his lips or at least to make him utter only honeyed words. Crackers are fired to drive away demons, and on his return four days later he is welcomed with an abundance of good things. His tablet or picture is reinstated with bowings and the burning of incense.

Getting faded, worn and tattered as the year goes by, but renewed when the New Year comes along, there are to be found on many of Hong Kong's double doors the pictures of Ngai Ching and Wat Yun, the Door Gods. The former was a military man, the latter a civilian, and according to legend the Emperor Tai Tsung on being taken ill declared he was afraid to remain alone at night because of the demons, so these two offered to be his guardians. To commemorate this the Emperor had their portraits elaborately coloured and pasted on to the palace doors to ward off evil spirits.

Another very popular god is Kwan Tai, the God of War. He is particularly popular because he does not want to wage war but to prevent it. In A.D. 170, during his life on earth, Kwan Tai and three others took an oath to live or die together fighting the Yellow Turban rebels who brought about the overthrow of the Han dynasty. During the Tai Ping rebellion a vision of Kwan Tai, wearing a glittering helmet and with a fierce aspect, led armed hosts to the support of a city threatened by the rebels, who were so terrified that they fled. Kwan Tai was awarded the title of Kwan--the Sage--by the Manchus as a token of gratitude. Kwan Tai also symbolizes loyalty. He is therefore found as the patron of thieves and smugglers (to prevent their betraying one another), and because he wards off war, carpenters keep him in their shops lest any of them use the tools as weapons.

These are the gods most commonly to be found in shops and homes, but there are many others. We were told there is 'a god of almost anything--of the kitchen, of the land, of the water, of lavatories, and of keeping babies from falling off chamber-pots'!

Many Europeans buy figures as ornaments not knowing them to be gods, and about the most familiar of them are Lao Sze Shin, the god of longevity, with an amusingly elongated skull and usually represented holding an almond, symbol of long life, and the god of literature, Yuen Chong. He stands with one foot on the head of a monster (ignorance) and holds a pen in his outstretched hand. Others of this category are Chu Pat Kwai, the pig-faced god, who symbolizes man's struggle with his conscience. Chu was banished to earth for drinking to excess and by mistake entered the body of a sow. He went with a Buddhist saint to India to fetch the sacred books of Buddhism and was rewarded by admission to paradise. Shun Hang Che, the monkey god, remarkable for his ingenuity, also went to India for the sacred books and was similarly allowed into paradise on his return. Sha Chang, the black-faced one, acted as baggage carrier on the journey to India for the Buddhist books. He is regarded as symbolizing the weakness of human character.