Geof Nanto

I personally think Zhuang Zhuo used the dream in 'The Dream of the Butterfly' purely as a device to switch realities to another totally separate perspective, namely that of the butterfly. However, no matter what his intention was - which we'll never know - it's our interpretations that matter; the ideas and images the allegory suggests. That's the beauty of allegory; it's meaning is not confined within definite boundaries.

Some thoughts on dreams from C. G. Jung........ "The dream is a little hidden door in the innermost and most secret recesses of the soul, opening into that cosmic night which was psyche long before there was any ego consciousness, and which will remain psyche no matter how far our ego-consciousness may extend." • Dreams are impartial, spontaneous products of the unconscious psyche, outside the control of the will. They are pure nature; they show us the unvarnished, natural truth, and are therefore fitted, as nothing else is, to give us back an attitude that accords with our basic human nature when our consciousness has strayed too far from its foundations and run into an impasse. • If, in addition to this, we bear in mind that the unconscious contains everything that is lacking to consciousness, that the unconscious therefore has a compensatory tendency, then we can begin to draw conclusions-provided, of course, that the dream does not come from too deep a psychic level. If it is a dream of this kind, it will as a rule contain mythological motifs, combinations of ideas or images which can be found in the myths of one's own folk or in those of other races. The dream will then have a collective meaning, a meaning which is the common property of mankind. • It is obvious that in handling "big" dreams intuitive guesswork will lead nowhere. Wide knowledge is required, such as a specialist ought to possess.' But no dream can be interpreted with knowledge alone. This knowledge, furthermore, should not be dead material that has been memorized; it must possess a living quality, and be infused with the experience of the person who uses it. Of what use is philosophical knowledge in the head, if one is not also a philosopher at heart? • One would do well to treat every dream as though it were a totally unknown object. Look at it from all sides, take it in your hand, carry it about with you, let your imagination play round it, and talk about it with other people. Primitives tell each other impressive dreams, in a public palaver if possible, and this custom is also attested in late antiquity, for all the ancient peoples attributed great significance to dreams ' Treated in this way, the dream suggests all manner of ideas and associations which lead us closer to its meaning. The ascertainment of the meaning is, I need hardly point out, an entirely arbitrary affair, and this is where the hazards begin. Narrower or wider limits will be set to the meaning, according to one's experience, temperament, and taste. Some people will be satisfied with little, for others much is still not enough. Also the meaning of the dream, or our interpretation of it, is largely dependent on the intentions of the interpreter, on what he expects the meaning to be or requires it to do. In eliciting the meaning he will involuntarily be guided by certain presuppositions, and it depends very much on the scrupulousness and honesty of the investigator whether he gains something by his interpretation or perhaps only becomes still more deeply entangled in his mistakes. • The art of interpreting dreams cannot be learnt from books. Methods and rules are good only when we can get along without them. Only the man who can do it anyway has real skill, only the man of understanding really understands.

I like this couplet from Cao Xueqin’s The Story of Stone written on a banner ‘Welcome to the Land of Illusion’...... Truth becomes fiction when the fiction’s true Real becomes not-real when the unreal’s real For Xueqin the ‘real’ and the ‘imaginary’ are both regarded as being different parts of a single underlying Reality.

Fold words into cranes. Knit sound into sequence and hold its shadow up against tomorrow’s blank slate sky. Watch how the dark flutter of notes makes meaning seem bigger than it really is. Watch how night washes time clean. Follow the words to their source and emerge into a clearing of complete emptiness. Become like a child.

Yes, I fully concur. There is much evidence for this. A particular example I have in front of me right now is a book of early paintings by Europeans of the Australian landscape. All the scenes have a European feel to them. The eucalyptus trees look like English oaks and the kangaroos look like some bizarre hybrid of a European animal. They experienced the landscape 'falsely' not because nature disguised itself, but their familiar categories and concepts blinded them to the 'reality' in front of them.

I wrote at length on these themes here: http://thedaobums.com/topic/38123-animalwise-a-parable-for-wayfarers/ However, as no one commented on the substance of the thread, I was content to let it drift down the stream of forgotten topics.

I like reading all these different interpretations; I don’t consider any of them as wrong. For me personally, the central message of the Butterfly allegory is wholeness. My reference here is my observation of the natural environment. The animals that surround me - the bats, the wallabies, myriad birds etc etc – all these wild creatures are totally whole. None of them doubt. And that gives them perfect de. They live totally focused on what they’re doing in the moment; spontaneous, certain. To my mind, this is the way of being Zhuang Zhou seeks to emulate. Classical Daoism doesn’t seek to further human consciousness by endless distinctions, disputation, doubt and worry, rather it seeks to return to the root of nature. But I suspect it’s fundamental to our human nature to enhance consciousness – hosting consciousness is our gift and burden. Hence, in that context, Classical Daoism provides a perfect counterpoint for when we go too far and start to fragment.

“One of the most important allegories of Daoism is the ‘Dream of the Butterfly’ in the Zhuangzi. Sometimes it is supposed to be a representation of all Daoist or even all Chinese philosophy in the West. This allegory encompasses fundamental Daoist notions, such as spontaneity, ‘free and easy wandering,’ non-action (wu wei), natural self-alternation (ziran), the zero-perspective of a sage and the understanding of correlation between life and death.” Here is another Western interpretation from philosopher John Gray….. Chuang-Tzu is as much a sceptic as a mystic. The sharp dichotomy between appearance and reality that is central in Buddhism is absent, and so is the attempt to transcend the illusions of everyday existence. Chuang-Tzu sees human life as a dream, but he does not seek to awaken from it. In a famous passage he writes of dreaming he was a butterfly, and not knowing on awakening whether he is a human being who has dreamt of being a butterfly, or a butterfly dreaming he is a human being. Unlike the Buddha, A.C. Graham explains, Chuang-Tzu did not seek to awaken from the dream. He dreamt of dreaming more lucidly: 'Buddhists awaken out of dreaming; ChuangTzu wakes up to dreaming.' Awakening to the truth that life is a dream need not mean turning away from it. It may mean embracing it: If 'Life is a dream' implies that no achievement is lasting, it also implies that life can be charged with the wonder of dreams, that we drift spontaneously through events that follow a logic different from that of everyday intelligence, that fears and regrets are as unreal as hopes and desires. Chuang-Tzu admits no idea of salvation. There is no self and no awakening from the dream of self: When we dream we do not know we are dreaming, and in the middle of a dream we interpret a dream within it; not until we wake do we know that we were dreaming. Only at the ultimate awakening shall we know that this is the ultimate dream. We cannot be rid of illusions. Illusion is our natural condition. Why not accept it?

I agree with the gist of what you're saying except for your expression "mere experiences". For me experiences - like, for instance, Blue Eyed Snake's account - underpin the whole thing.

Obviously, from reading these posts, there are many authentic perspectives on sacredness. For me, cultivating sacredness forms a gateway between my separateness as an embodied human and the Dao. It’s a way of working with my human emotions. I personally don’t consider the Dao as either sacred or not sacred because the Dao is "that by which all things become what they are" (including sacredness). But I respect and value the perspectives of those who use the expression differently; in the final analysis the differences come down to semantics. “The Dao is sacred and unnameable, not religion or philosophy; it is the great mother of all things including humanity. Its teaching is a combination of meaning (about life and all reality), and a guide to living. The two most important kinds of relationship in life are, firstly, those between the Dao and people and, secondly, those amongst people themselves, the second being always contingent upon the first. The Dao, and how we treat it, is what determines our human-ness. Our connection with the Dao is sacred and must be looked after, the relation between people and the Dao becomes the template for society and social relations. Therefore all meaning comes from the Dao.”

The Easter Bunny as you - and contemporary society in general - conceive it is a good example of a ritual that's lost it roots in lived cultural experience and become hollow; empty of meaning, merely a commercial sales gimmick. There's an excellent overview of the origins of the tradition and its complex symbolism at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Easter_Bunny

What you say is supported by chapter 29 of the Daodejing.... The world is a sacred vessel; It is not something that can be acted upon. Those who act on it destroy it; But for me this remains a concept unless I actively cultivate a sense of the sacred. And even so it's too big. My experience is fleeting; easily lost in practical living. Perhaps that's partly what you meant by "But in practical terms, there are sometimes good reasons to avoid or dispose of certain things."

Made me laugh, but even in jest I don't entirely condone this mocking of the unknown by affiliation with known fantasy. We've lost Arrheton ( άρρητον)– Not to be spoken. Innermost ineffable experience; any attempt at description would be an act of desecration. Here's an example of inner experience recounted by Nietzsche. He claims that during one of his lakeside walks in Sils-Maria in Switzerland, in July 1881, he experienced a vision concerning Zarathustra and the nature of inspiration. He describes the experience as follows in his posthumously-published autobiographical Ecce Homo .... “Zarathustra himself, as a type… he stole upon me… Has anyone at the end of the nineteenth century a clear idea of what poets of strong eras called inspiration? If not, I will describe it. If we had the slightest residue of superstition remaining in ourselves, we would scarcely be capable of rejecting outright the thought of being no more than a mere incarnation, a mere mouthpiece, a mere medium of overpowering forces. The concept of revelation in the sense that suddenly, with indescribable certainty and subtlety, something becomes visible and audible, something that shakes us to the core and knocks us over… All of this is involuntary unto the extreme but as in a storm of a feeling of freedom, absoluteness, power, divinity… This is my experience of inspiration; I have no doubt that we would have to go back thousands of years to find anyone who could say to me ‘it is mine too’.”

Dustybeijing made this point too and I fully accept it. However, never personally had other people's notions of 'sacred' thrust upon me, I don't have these negative connotations. In fact, I rather like the word for its emotive power in a constructive and positive sense. Yes, the topic question is poorly phrased. Hopefully I've redressed it somewhat in a previous post by restating it as “ Is the Dao sacred for me?” I thought you'd know that Komjathy has declared a 'jihad' against all people who use the term Daoist outside of teachings affiliated with traditional mainland Chinese lineages. But really, I don't want to go there. Aside from this passion, he is an excellent researcher and communicator of the Daoist tradition. (Edit: ‘jihad’, of course, is just an exaggerated, melodramatic expression. ‘Strongly opposed’ would be more accurate.) Well expressed.

My experience grows from whatever I cultivate. If I choose to cultivate sacredness I will experience it. If I deny it, I will not experience it. Speaking for myself, cultivating a sense of the sacred leads to an enhanced experience of life.

The question of the topic is a personal one; it’s not meant to be about the unnameable Dao itself. It could better be expressed as “ Is the Dao sacred for me?” My immediate answer is “no, it’s neither sacred or not sacred for me”. However, I question the validity of my answer. Hence the topic question stems more from my general interest in the role of sacredness in Daoist cultivation. Sacredness is fundamental to all religious traditions; it’s obviously deemed as universally important. Kompathy states “The Dao is the sacred and ultimate concern of Daoists.” He is referring here to mainland Chinese practitioners. So why is it not a concern for most of us Western practitioners? Is this a baby we’ve thrown out in discarding the bathwater of redundant religious forms?

From my observation the dominant attitude of contemporary society is that nothing is sacred. And that’s probably a valid reaction to the hollow forms, and claims of ownership, of the sacred by mainstream religious traditions. In my case, as someone brought up outside of any religious tradition, notions of sacredness or otherwise were not part of my worldview. It’s only been later in life that I’ve felt the need to reach out for this previously lacking dimension. For me descriptions of the Dao as ‘unnameable’ or ‘ineffable’ only touch my intellect, whereas sacredness engages my whole being, my emotions; my heart-mind. A sense for sacredness is something that needs to be cultivated. It’s an individual and intensely personal experience, and not something that can be held or grasped.

Yes, all these terms tend to have a strong emotional charge, thanks to the very chequered history of religious institutions; many negatives, such as their dogma, hypocrisy, and will to power. But for me 'sacred' does not imply the "need to bow down to any particular concept or 'thing' and whisper a thousand passionate "Thank you"s.." Nothing like that. It does imply a certain humility though; seeing myself my own size in relationship to the enormity of existence.

Many thinkers have tried to define what religion is, but it seems it ultimately defies any neat characterisation. According to Wikipedia, the typical dictionary definition of religion refers to a "belief in, or the worship of, a god or gods" or the "service and worship of God or the supernatural". However, writers and scholars have expanded upon the "belief in god" definitions as insufficient to capture the diversity of religious thought and experience. The article goes on to state that there are numerous definitions of religion and lists several prominent ones. See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Religion However, perhaps most tellingly, the section concludes with the statement: An increasing number of scholars have expressed reservations about ever defining the "essence" of religion. All the Wikipedia listed definitions are interesting, but I particularly like William James definition from The Varieties of Religious of Religious Experiences. For James, the institutions of religion are highly secondary. They bore or offend James, as they do for many of us. “Religion, therefore, as I now ask you arbitrarily to take it, shall mean for us the feelings, acts, and experiences of individual men in their solitude, so far as they apprehend themselves to stand in relation to whatever they may consider the divine. Since the relation may be either moral, physical, or ritual, it is evident that out of religion in the sense in which we take it, theologies, philosophies, and ecclesiastical organizations may secondarily grow.” I’d rephrase James’ wording as follows… Religion, therefore, as I now ask you arbitrarily to take it, shall mean for us the feelings, acts, and experiences of individuals in their solitude, so far as they apprehend themselves to stand in relation to whatever they may consider the sacred. As for Komjathy, the key word here, to my mind, is sacred. That is the pertinent question for me. What do I consider sacred? Do I consider anything sacred? I have thought further on the topic but before I continue I’m interested to hear what others think.

Here is an outline of Daoist theology as delineated by Louis Komjathy….. Before examining Daoist theology, it is also helpful to understand the various types of theology, with some modifications in order to make space for non-theistic views in a comparative framework. We may identify at least the following theologies: animistic, atheistic, monistic, monotheistic, panenhenic, pantheistic, panentheistic, and polytheistic. Animisitic theologies hold that nature is populated by personal gods and/or spiritual entities. Such deities and spirits tend to be place-specific. Although resistant to such designations, atheistic theology, which is technically anti-theological, denies the existence of gods, especially the Abrahamic god ("God"). Monistic theologies hold that there is one impersonal Reality. Monotheistic theologies hold that there is one supreme, personal god, usually with conventional attributes of personhood and agency (e.g. God the Creator, God the Father). Panenhenic theology holds that Nature as a whole is sacred. Pantheistic theology claims that the sacred is in the world, that the world is a manifestation of the sacred. Because this creates certain theological problems, such as the diminishment of the sacred through extinction, some theological discourse tends towards panentheism, that is, that the sacred is in and beyond the world. Under this view, there is both an immanent (world-affirming) and transcendent (world-negating) aspect. Finally, polytheistic theology is belief in many gods. These various theologies may not be mutually exclusive or necessarily irreconcilable. The primary Daoist theology is monistic, panenhenic, and panentheistic. Daoist theology is secondarily animistic and polytheistic. Daoist theology centers, first and foremost, on the Dao (Tao). The Dao is the sacred and ultimate concern of Daoists.

Stosh, our perspectives on this are too different for any meaningful dialogue. However, I respect your views and like reading your comments.

I agree that Zhuang Zhou would not want to be part of any organization, religious or otherwise. I also think he'd disdain the label 'Daoist' that's been retrospectively applied to him. (Edit; 'Disdain' is a poor choice of words. I think he'd just inwardly smile and shrug the label off. It wouldn't affect him one way or another.) As to religion - well that's a huge topic. I was brought up without any formal religion and don't belong to any such grouping now. However to my observation we humans have an innate tendency for religion. (Religion definition from Wikipedia: A religion is an organized collection of beliefs, cultural systems, and world views that relate humanity to an order of existence.) Those who disdain traditional religions often align themselves with contemporary quasi-religious movements. In my country the Greens are an excellent example. But perhaps the most pervasive quasi-religion centres around science. Whilst the scientific method is undoubtedly a powerful determinant of certain types of truth, faith in its universality amounts to scientism. From Wikipedia…Scientism is a term used to refer to belief in the universal applicability of the scientific method and approach, and the view that empirical science constitutes the most authoritative worldview or most valuable part of human learning to the exclusion of other viewpoints. It has been defined as "the view that the characteristic inductive methods of the natural sciences are the only source of genuine factual knowledge and, in particular, that they alone can yield true knowledge about man and society." The other great quasi-religion of our time is humanism which is actually a secular version of Christianity.

I agree with what you're saying here about understanding Zhuangzi's message as correctly as possible. However there's a lot to what that implies. My comments about illusion / reality were on my mind from as yet unexpressed thoughts about 'The Dream of the Butterfly' allegory. Have you been following that topic? In retrospect, I should have left that part of my comment out; those thoughts could best be explored on the 'Butterfly' thread, and that's exactly what I plan to do at some future date. However I can't agree with your observation that Zhuangzi is shaking his head at religious Taoism. For a start religious Daoism (aka organised Daoism) did not come into existence for many centuries after Zhuang Zhou's death. And even so, I don't share the disdain for religion so popular amongst the intelligentsia of our countries. There's much wisdom in all the great religious traditions of the world outside of dogma, blind faith, and obedience to hierarchies.

Depends what you mean by truth, doesn't it. The best definition I've come across for ‘truth’ is that truth is what is believed to be true. In other words truth is something we construct within our society. And, although our Western values with their emphasis on humanism and scientific truth are now almost universally pervasive, that wasn't always the case. Even a cursory knowledge of the different cultures of the world reveals stark differences in values between cultures and within cultures over time. Sure, all societies make sense of themselves and the world – but they do so in different ways. As our focus here is on pre-modern Chinese culture, the following extract from Francois Jullien’s The Propensity of Things: Toward a History of Efficacy in China is informative of such differences. Wisdom or Strategy: Conforming with Propensity Conceiving, as they do, of all reality as a deployment, the Chinese are not led to backtrack along a necessarily infinite series of possible causes. Convinced as they are of the ineluctable nature of propensity, they are not inclined to speculate on ends, which can never be anything more than probable. Neither cosmogonical stories nor teleological suppositions interest them. They are concerned neither to recount the beginning nor to imagine the end. All that exists, has always existed, and will always exist are interactions that are constantly at work, and reality is never anything other than their ceaseless process. Thus, the problem that concerns the Chinese is not that of "being," in the Greek sense (i.e., being as opposed to becoming and the perceptible world); rather it is the problem of the capacity to function: the source of the efficacy that is at work everywhere in reality and the best way to profit from it. As soon as one believes, as the Chinese do, that all oppositions interact correlatively as a matter of principle, any idea of antagonism dissolves; reality can never be dramatic. Even in the case of strategic deployment, in which the conflictual aspect is the most marked (since one is face-to-face with the enemy), the advice of Chinese thinkers is always to aim to evolve, to adapt totally to the movements of the enemy, rather than attack him head on. A general should always act with a view to profiting from the dynamism of this partner, his enemy, for as long as it operates, so as to allow himself to be renewed by it at the expense of his opponent and at no cost to himself. In this way he will maintain his own energy as completely as at the beginning. Any head-on attack will be costly and possibly risky. All one needs to do is always respond and react to the incitement of one's opponent, just as water constantly adapts to the variations in land levels. In this way one can preserve one's own dynamism and remain safe. In China, "practical reason" thus lies in adapting to the propensity at work so as to be carried along by it and exploit it. No initial alternative between good and evil is involved, since the status of both is ontological. It is simply a matter of either "going along with" the propensity and thereby profiting from it or "going against it" and being ruined. For what is valid for the general is also valid for the sage. He does not abstract from some ephemeral codification of reality a norm that can be set up as a goal for his will (e.g., orders and rules of conduct). Instead, he "conforms" with the initiative of the continuous course of things ("Heaven" being seen as the inexhaustible fount of the process) so as to tap into its efficacy. From a subjective perspective, he does not aim to assert his liberty, but simply follows the inclination toward the good that exists in embryonic form in every conscious mind (in a sense of solidarity with all that exists, i.e., the Confucian ren); this leads to perfect morality. Far from seeking to reconstruct the world on the basis of some order or another, attempting to impose his own designs on it and force the course of things, all he does is respond and react to whatever reality prompts within him. And this he does not do partially or at particular moments, when it is in his interest to do so, but in all situations and continuously. In this way his power to change reality is checked by no obstacles or limits. He does not "act," does nothing himself (on his own initiative), and the degree of the efficacy of this behavior is determined by the extent to which he refrains from trying to manage things. His cooperation with reality as a whole results in a power of influence that can be at once invisible, infinite, and perfectly spontaneous. In contrast to action and causality, which are transitive, the only kind of efficacy that is recognized is intransitive, and “Heaven”, set up as transcending the human horizon, is itself simply the totalization, or absolutization, of that immanence. It is therefore hardly surprising that Chinese thought is so conformist. It does not seek to distance itself from the "world," does not question reality, is not even surprised by it. It has no need of myths (and we, for our part, know that the most farfetched myths are always the most powerful) to save reality from absurdity and confer meaning on it. Instead of inventing myths that attempt to explain the enigma of the world through fabulous flights of fancy, the Chinese devised rites to embody and express by signs, at the level of human behavior, the functioning inherent in the world’s disposition. Reality was not regarded as a problem but presented itself from the beginning as a credible process. It did not need to be deciphered like a mystery but simply to be understood In its functioning. There was no need to project a "meaning" onto the world or to satisfy the expectations of a subject/individual, for its meaning stemmed in its entirety, without requiring any act of faith, from the propensity of things.

The precision that quotation was referring to is in the use of language when attempting to describe the Dao. I agree with you that precision is necessary in many areas of life. For your research into how much Confucianism works with Daoism, Arthur Waley's Three Ways of Thought in Ancient China could be a good place to start. It's a well written book, not overly long, and contains some excellent translations from the Zhuangzi. The three ways of thought the title refers to are the Daoist, the Confucianist, and the "Realist." of fourth century BC China. The book underscores the interplay between these three philosophies, drawing on extracts from Zhuangzi, Mencius, and Han Feizi.