Taoism and the notion of Chinese religion. Health, harmony, and the deities. Recap from last time. What does it mean to treat something as a monolith?
What is transcendence and imminence? What does it mean to have a transcendent interpretation of the Tao? Who is Lao Tzu? Part 1. There was never just one Taoism.
Last time, we discussed the fallacy of thinking in monoliths, mistakenly thinking that something vast and complex is uniform and simple. In the study of religion, this problem takes on two different forms. And we've met them both already. The first is forgetting that other people are individuals just like we are.
Just because someone is a Christian, that doesn't mean that they think like every other Christian. The world is diverse in population groups, ways of thinking, and cultures. And it always, always has been.
The second problem of monolithic thinking in religious studies is chronological. We often assume that there's a thing called progress, and progress means things get more complicated over time. Therefore, we reason, the further back in time you go, the more simple things get.
Now, in the case of religions specifically, this kind of thinking about progress creates the odd side effect that tells us falsely that once upon a time, there was some pristine form of a religion. It's as if the first Muslims were all in agreement on everything, or the first Christians did not have deep-seated differences of opinions about all sorts of topics. Well, I'll tell you now, there was no one homogenous Muslim or Christian community in the past, even the first of them.
The first Muslims were not a monolith, and neither were the first Christians, and neither were the first Taoists or Confucianists. Take a look at this. About 200 years after the time in which Lao Tzu is said to have written the Tao Te Ching, we find the next great Taoist texts, the Shuang Tzu, written around the year 300 BCE. and it's attributed to an author of the same name.
The text is mostly a collection of stories in which characters and historical figures act out Taoist teachings, often in funny ways. Take for instance this story of Confucius meeting with an amputee named Notos. In Le, there was a man named Shushan Notos who had had his foot cut off.
Stumping along, he went to see Confucius. You weren't careful enough, said Confucius. Since you've already broken the law and gotten yourself into trouble like this, what do you expect to gain by coming to me now?
Noto said, I just didn't understand my duty and was too careless of my body, so I lost a foot. But I've come now. Because I still have something that is worth more than a foot, and I want to try to hold on to it.
There is nothing that heaven doesn't cover, nothing that earth doesn't bear up. I supposed, master, that you would be like heaven and earth. How did I know that you would act like this? It was stupid of me, said Confucius.
Please, sir, won't you come in? I would like to describe to you what I have learned, but no toes went out. First, the meaning of this story.
On one side, we have the revered sage Confucius, and on the other is a man who is missing a foot because he is a criminal. He's been punished for some sort of crime and they chopped off his foot. So this is literally an encounter between a holy man and an ex-con. And it goes exactly not how one would expect.
Confucius is an arrogant, dismissive fool, while no-toes is humble, earnest, and seeks knowledge. So, we can suppose that Confucius here stands in for Confucianism, while No-Toes stands in for Taoism. Confucianism is uptight and haughty, and Taoism is modest and wise.
Fine. But why have this story at all? Is it just there to make fun of Confucianism, or is there something more to it? Maybe the author is trying to draw a wedge between Confucianism and Taoism, because there's a lot of people who dabbled in both. When people try to draw lines between groups, or complain about the lack of purity within a certain population, well, that tells us that there isn't purity, that people and their behaviors are diverse.
So, even in this ancient Taoist classic, from when the tradition was new, we can detect traces of internal diversity in arguments. And, by the way, there are other stories in the same book of Xuanzi which depict Confucius in a positive light. And then there is also the diversity that comes along with new historical situations. In the first and second centuries of the Christian calendar, Confucianism was a powerful state religion.
And at the same time, A foreign religion from India, which we call today Buddhism, was starting to make waves in China. We'll cover Buddhism soon enough, but for now, all you need to know is that Taoism was under political and cultural threat. Confucianism held mundane authority, while Buddhism, with its many foreign divinities and magical practices, was capturing the popular imagination.
Taoism's vision of the transcendent Tao, which appeared to have little political value and was difficult to understand, couldn't compete with that. And so, Taoism adapted to meet the needs of the day. Here's just one example of how Taoism did this. A hermit named Zhongdao Ling, who came from a long line of Taoists, began to claim that he had been visited by the spirit of Lao Tzu. That is, Lao Tzu, the sage, had become a divine god-like being, a manifestation of the Tao itself.
Now the Tao, which last time seemed transcendent and therefore impossible to grasp or even name properly, now seems human-like. It has a name. It speaks. It has a clear agenda. This vision of the Tao, which is more like a god, gave Sheng the title of the first celestial master, and told him to teach, practice medicine on the sick, and make people less sinful.
This sect of Daoism, named the School of the Celestial Masters, featured many gods, demons, and other supernatural powers, making it more attractive to commoners who had no grasp of Daoist philosophy. This Daoist School of the Celestial Masters is still popular in Taiwan and Hong Kong today, by the way. And this School of the Celestial Masters is hardly unique.
There are many Daoist schools, each with their own particular practices and histories. Part 2. The Pure Ones and the Immortals. Last time, we mentioned that in the early Taoist literatures, like the Tao Te Ching, the Tao was particularly transcendent, impossible for the human mind to understand and human language to describe. In a certain sense, that's a very philosophically fulfilling way of looking at things.
The truth is beyond all mundane categories. It stands over and apart from this messy reality that we live in. But then there arises a problem. We are not transcendent beings ourselves. It's literally impossible to relate to a transcendent category or unspeakable reality.
If the Tao, the truth, is beyond all understanding and thought, well, then it's kind of hard to understand or think about it much. And so the Taoists turned to intermediate beings, who were more transcendent than this world, but still retained something imminent, like a name or a human form. So in the case we just saw of Shengdao Ling and the School of Celestial Masters, there is still a transcendent Tao, But... that Dao can be understood in the form of Lao Tzu.
Lao Tzu is something more than a mere human, but he's still human-like enough to be meaningful to us. And there is some room for this in the Daodejing itself. It says, Every being in the universe is an expression of the Dao. It springs into existence unconscious, perfect, free. Takes on a physical body, lets circumstances complete it.
If every being in the universe is an expression of the Tao, it stands to reason that by learning something about the beings of the universe, one can gain more access to understanding the Tao. In other words, if everything imminent springs from the transcendent Tao, then, Everything must somehow reflect the Tao, too. It's just a question of which beings express the Tao to people particularly well. And Taoists have, and continue to, find such beings. There are whole pantheons of gods and spiritual powers evoked by the Taoists in a variety of settings and epochs.
These are beings that are more than just the imminent world that we live in, but they're a lot more conceivable to the human mind. than the abstract Dao itself is. Now, some of these we know already. There are ancient forces like Tian, the sometimes personified Heaven, and the Ancestors.
And there are gods of the Earth, and of certain lands, and of certain places. There are gods of the cardinal directions, the center, the north, the east, the west, and the south. And there is also the ever-popular kitchen god called Zaojun, who watches over household affairs to make sure everything is running smoothly.
Physical beings, which reflect the Dao in some obvious way, are also natural candidates for gods. So, because the Dao is great and vast, mountains are often depicted as gods because mountains remind us of greatness and vastness. For this reason, many Daoist temples are found on mountains. And because the Dao courses and flows like water, rivers and other waterways also tend to become God to reveal the Dao.
Of particular note are the San Qing, the three pure ones. Now, returning to the Dao De Jing, we are told, the Dao gives birth to one, one gives birth to two. Two gives birth to three.
Three gives birth to the myriad things. What on earth does this mean? Who are these three that were before the many things of the material world, who are also closest to the Tao itself?
The first of these three is later going to be identified with the figure Yen-Chi-Tien-Shuen. primordial lord of heaven, also called the Jade Emperor, who is the first created being, and therefore exposes the Tao's role as the source of everything. The second is Lingbao Tianzun, the numinous treasure of heaven, who expresses the Tao's transcendence like a hidden treasure.
And third is Daodei Tianzun, the way and power of heaven. This is the manifestation of the Dao which appears in Lao Tzu and therefore makes Daoism knowable. Another collection of supernatural beings of particular note are the eight immortals, the Bashiyan, who became popular around the 12th century.
The immortals are perhaps less like gods in the Western imagination, and more like patron saints. Some were historical figures and others were more legendary, but each were granted some degree of transcendence by the higher divinities for their virtues. and in return for their endless lives and magical powers, they must help those in need.
Now, this is just a small sample of possible Taoist gods, spirits, and immortal beings. Those who stand between the immanent world we know and the transcendent Tao we cannot know. How each of these figures into Taoist life and practice varies wildly based on local familial and personal preference and custom.
Part 3. Yin, Yang, and Chinese Religion. When discussing Daoism, as well as Confucianism, you'll notice a lot of examples of things being in harmony with each other, or not, or being in accord, or not. People must live in harmony with heaven, or the gods, or their ancestors, or their society, or the Tao itself. Just as the process of living in harmony with society produces changes in that society, so too does that attempt to live in harmony with the cosmos and its way create changes within the self. Taoism, therefore, is often defined by a certain fascination with bodily health, things that manipulate and better the self.
The famous alchemical practices of Chinese folk medicine, as well as practices such as acupuncture and tai chi, come out of this way of thinking. Just as the individual must be in accord with the cosmos and society, the various parts of the body must be put in accord with each other. Now, how exactly one was to live in accord with the Dao was complicated and required various professional classes of priests, monks, healers, and researchers. And, as we must always expect, they didn't always agree with each other.
Now, throughout Chinese and other East Asian cultures, including both Daoist and Confucianist ones, we see the famous symbol of the qi. I'm guessing you've seen it before. Qi literally means air or gas, but it refers to the energy and flow of living things.
We might call it their dynamism, the stuff in animate things that makes them animate things. Qi is what Chinese medicine, acupuncture, and Tai Chi are trying to improve. And it's this Qi that penetrates the universe and permeates it, taking on many forms, always changing and adapting. Now, at its most basic level, qi is the interaction of just two principles, yang and yin. Yang is activity.
It's positivity, not in the sense of being good, but in the sense of adding on, contributing, making a positive addition. Yang is contrasted to yin. receptivity, withdrawing, negating but only in the sense of removing, not in the sense of being bad. Think of mathematics for a moment, this might help. Yin and yang are like the positive and the negative in math.
Yang is the power that adds on, yin subtracts, it draws back. Together they are two complementary powers that act against each other. while also being in harmony. They are a binary, a set.
You can't understand what it means to add without understanding what it means to subtract. And yet, you can't understand what it means to subtract without knowing what it means to add. So there's a tension between the two, yin and yang, between receptivity and activity.
But they're also complementary. They're defined by being the opposite of the other. They're in conflict as much as they're in harmony.
And East Asian peoples have seen these two aspects of qi, the active yang and the receptive yin, and everything. The active, the yang, is light, which penetrates the receptive darkness of the yin. The yang is hot, the yin cold.
The yang is dry, the yin wet. The yang is the activities of the daytime. The yin is the inaction of the nighttime.
The yang moves, the yin is still. The yang inside of you is that thing that speaks. The yin inside of you is that thing that listens.
These sets of forces and activities all need each other, even though they're sometimes in conflict. If it helps, here's a passage from a 2nd century BCE text called the Huangdi Neijing, The Yellow Emperor's Simple Questions. Yin and yang are the underlying principle of heaven and earth. They are the web that holds all the myriad things secure.
They are father and mother to all transformations and alterations. They are the source and beginning of all creating and killing. In order to treat illnesses, one must penetrate to their source. Heaven arose out of the accumulation of yang.
The earth arose out of the accumulation of yin. Yin is tranquility. Yang is agitation. Yang creates, but yin stimulates development.
Yang kills. Yin stores up. Yang transforms influences.
Yin... completes form. And everything and everyone is both yang and yin all the time. So for instance, yang is masculinity, while yin is femininity. But it's more than just simple biological binaries between women and men.
For instance, think of a mother and her son. In the most immediate way, we can say that the mother is manifesting Yin, while the Sun is manifesting Yang, based solely upon their genders. But as a parent, the mother is Yang, and the child over which she acts is Yin. See, no one is pure Yin or pure Yang, for the same reason that no one is purely masculine or purely feminine, or only left and never right. In fact, if someone were to have too much Yang or Yin in them, their Qi would be considered unharmonious, and they would have to do certain things to correct for that, like change their diets.
In fact, death, we are often told, is caused by a radical disharmony in one's Qi, leaving one's body useless. Thank you for watching. Therefore, it was incumbent upon everyone to try and balance their various manifestations of yin and yang, by which they could live well with others and live a long and happy and harmonious life for themselves. Indeed, if someone could fight off these imbalances between yin and yang indefinitely, then they could possibly become one of the immortals themselves. The applications of thinking of Xi's manifestations as receptive yin and active yang echo across Chinese, Korean, Japanese, and Southeast Asian cultures.
And of course, in a globalized world, they aren't really that foreign to anyone anymore. But this way of thinking can tell us something about the study of religion. Rather than having a simplistic reading of religion, which just seeks to label certain thoughts and practices neatly, That there is Taoism, this here is Confucianism.
We need to have a dynamic reading of religion. Not monolithic. Not reductive. Not one worldview in opposition to another one all the time. In fact...
That is the truth historically. Taoism, Confucianism, and other traditions that we call religions have been in contact with each other and in flux within themselves for their entire histories. You cannot understand any one religion unless you understand its own internal diversity and its encounter with external diversity. There's a famous, often told story called the Vinegar Tasters.
There are three men. were gathered around a jar or a vat of vinegar, and each one of them describes what it tastes like. The first one sticks his finger in and says it tastes sour. Another says it tastes bitter, and the third one says it tastes sweet.
So, are all the men accurately describing the vinegar? Yes. Are they in agreement? No. Are they correcting each other?
Yes. But are they in harmony? Yes. And we too can ask if one of the three of them has a particularly correct interpretation. Maybe the vinegar is more sour than it is bitter or sweet, for instance.
Now, these three men aren't just any three men. The one who says the vinegar is bitter is Confucius, because Confucius said life is bitter and required the correction given by the Li, by education, etiquette, and ritual. The one who says that the vinegar is sweet is Lao Tzu, because he thought that life was truly harmonious when lived in harmony with the Tao.
And the other, the one who says that the vinegar is sour, is the Buddha. Once again, I know we haven't met him yet, but he taught that life was sorrowful and painful. Certain people and certain movements in China could be more clearly Taoists or Confucianists or some other tradition, maybe even to the point of suppressing one of the other schools. The story of the vinegar tasters does not suggest that Taoism, Confucianism, or Buddhism are all entirely correct. All the story of the Vinegar Tasters is telling us is that they fit together somehow, as some sort of part of a whole, even when they're in conflict.
They don't reduce down into each other, creating some sort of monolithic category called Chinese religion. They don't even reduce into the category of religion at all, because usually in English you can't say someone has multiple religions, or that religions are dependent upon each other, as Taoism Confucianism, and other Chinese schools of thought most certainly are. Here are some thoughts to rattle around in your brain for a second.
What can we learn from the interaction of Confucius and Notos? What are some supernatural powers Taoists have evoked, and why have they turned to them? What does the story of the vinegar tasters tell us about Chinese religion?
This lecture was based on the following works. World Religions, Taoism, by Paula R. Hertz, in the third edition from 2009. Also check out the complete works of Shuangzi, translated by Burton Watson, 2013.