thinker
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Everything posted by thinker
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So what, beyond the Three Treasures and wú wéi, might be included in such a simple, plain-language, non-mystical presentation of Daoism for the layman? Or perhaps it would be better to think of it as something that would be presented to a child, except that a child would probably have an unfair advantage, seeing as their thinking hasn't been as badly screwed up by our (American) school system yet.
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As far as I know you're correct. Certainly I found it online, not in a refereed journal.
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Try: http://www.daoistcenter.org/Daoism_Misconceptions.pdf
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I'm going back to a paper called "Common Misconceptions Concerning Daoism (Taoism)" by Louis Komjathy. In it he states that many things that are usually associated with Daoism today either came along much later, or predate it and were a widely accepted part of all of Chinese culture at the time that Daoism was first formalized, and thus have no special attachment to Daoism, even though they were included. The list includes: yin/yang, the five elements, qi, traditional Chinese medicine (some contributions to which were made by Daoists), fengshui, qigong, Daoist yoga, "sexual yoga", taiji quan (a.k.a. tai chi ch’üan), internal style martial arts, and the Yiing (a.k.a. I-Ching), Add to this a few others that I've run across, like deities (any), celibacy, vegetarianism, tree-hugging environmentalism, extreme pacifism (as opposed to a more practical minimization of violence), and the notion that spending your life just "being" (like a plant) will lead to anything good (no offense to "I am aware" intended). At least for the moment it seems that tea is still included. If he's correct then I wonder what percentage of Daoists would run off the moment that they were convinced that all of the really cool Chinese cultural stuff isn't Daoism, just rampant sinophilia on the part of Westerners bored with their own culture. I'm guessing about... 90%? Last I read, the population of self-identified Daoists in the U.S. was about 40,000. That would leave us with about 4,000. Then we could almost get all of us into one big convention center some day.
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Agreed. I've read a few papers by Kirkland. The one that you're referencing is the most disappointing of the lot, and lowered my overall opinion of his work. He seems to have some kind of personal ax to grind, and throws around unsubstantiated, unconvincing claims as support. He has, however, written some other material in which he provided useful points of view, and good references to go with them. I consider him not so much a good source of conclusions about Daoism, but a useful source of references related to contemporary issues in Daoism, in those papers where he actually bothers to give the references.
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Where can I find that list?
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I don't think that the Qīngjìng Jīng relates to what I had in mind. The QJJ is translated in just as vague and poetic a fashion as the DDJ. Let me give another example. From my own perspective, DDJ seems to tell us that the wise man/emperor should use his authority as little as is reasonable. From this we might derive some general statement about the appropriate uses of authority, expressed in simple English, such as: 2. Use your authority as little as is reasonable. Now compare this to a sample statement from the given link to the QJJ: "The Great Tao has no name; It raises and nourishes the myriad beings. I do not know its name - So I call it Tao." Do you see the difference? Imagine that a secretary with a high school degree, who has no experience with Eastern religions at all, comes to you one day and says "I've read some interesting things about Daoism, and I want to find out more about it. Maybe even consider becoming a Daoist. What can I read that would make sense to me?" Would you give her the QJJ, that reads just as cryptically as the DDJ, or something all of whose content reads like "Use your authority as little as is reasonable."? Remember that we're not talking about a monk, for whom mastering all of the fine points is important, we're talking about the equivalent of a Catholic child approaching his First Communion who needs to understand some basics, possibly so that he can make an informed choice about which religious tradition he wants to pursue. Someone who, in the Catholic church, would almost certainly be handed a copy of the Catholic catechism, among other documents, to start with. I think that a better approach would be a document that contains no mystical or poetic elements at all. One that restricts itself to empirical elements accessible to laymen who have no experience with "qi", or "internal medicine", or "meditation", or "feng-shui", or whatever. Just the "normal" external 5 senses, and statements like "wash your hands before dinner". The more advanced stuff can always be added in later volumes. This all ignores the fact that there seem to be generally-recognized-as-such Buddhist borrowings in the QJJ that would not be present in any such document developed solely from the DDJ. Thus, one necessary step in converting the QJJ into a solely-DDJ-derived Daoist catechism would be the removal of these borrowings.
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Actually I think that we're in agreement on this, but that I phrased my statement awkwardly and the interpretation got confused. The intent of my statement was that it's obvious that genocide motivated by sadism is disallowed by Daoism, and that a person who engaged in such an act is obviously not a practicing Daoist. I was asking, rhetorically, if it was going too far to state that this was the case. Because if it isn't, that is, if my statement about genocide and Daoism being inconsistent with each other is correct, then we now have a basis on which to begin the process of defining Daoism. We can start by saying that in order to be a Daoist one must not engage in genocide for the purpose of satisfying one's sadistic impulses. This is not a sufficient condition to be considered a Daoist, but it is a necessary one. Of course, that rule is so narrow in application to be almost useless. The reason that I used it is psychological. As I said in the original post, "It's as if Daoists hate the idea that Daoist doctrine might be such that they aren't free to do absolutely anything they want to, or as if they can't bare the idea that there might be people in the world for whom they can definitively say 'he's not a Daoist'." Now we can start to move beyond that. Here's a rule that we can agree on even though it constrains our actions a tiny bit and excludes a handful of historical figures. Now we see that there's nothing wrong with rules that constrain our actions, or that exclude people from being considered Daoists, as long as the rules are in agreement with the doctrine of Daoism. Now we can proceed to work on the problem of defining Daoism without angst, because we know that constraints and exclusions that are in agreement with Daoist doctrine are nothing to get upset about. In fact, a clearly worded set of requirements and constraints would only help Daoism to spread, as it would make Daoism more comprehensible to the layman. For example, we might say that one part of Daoist doctrine is: 1. Daoists are expected to behave in accordance with the "Three Treasures", which are commonly translated today as "benevolence", "humility", and "frugality". I phrased it so as to clearly leave open the possibility that a better translation might come along one day. Think of how much good could be done if the Daoist community could go through the entire DDJ and come up with an at least somewhat generally acceptable set of such statements regarding both the beliefs and practices discussed throughout the entire work. A sort of Daoist catechism. Western laypersons considering becoming Daoists would have a good foundation for their decision making without having to paw through a dozen randomly-selected, overly poetic, badly executed interpretations of interpretations of translations of the DDJ.
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One of the problems in pinning down Daoist doctrine is the dislike that many, if not most, Daoists seem to have for doing so. Many Daoists in the West seem to want to turn Daoism into a sort of Eastern Unitarianism, or as I like to think of it, Unitarianism with extra tea. It's as if Daoists hate the idea that Daoist doctrine might be such that they aren't free to do absolutely anything they want to, or as if they can't bare the idea that there might be people in the world for whom they can definitively say "he's not a Daoist". So let's start with something simple. Should willful genocide motivated purely by sadism be prohibited by Daoist doctrine? Can we say of a person who observably acts in such a fashion that he is not a Daoist? Or is that going too far? Daoism is not Buddhism. Daoism is not Unitarianism. Daoism is not New-Ageism.
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Thanks. More for my reading list.
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There's always a chance that I speak from cultural prejudice. I doubt that there have been many utterances made throughout human history for which this isn't the case. As far as any personal definition of mine of the term "originalist view" affecting my suggestions, I'm sure they do. That's why I included such statements as: "I would start by identifying...", and "Of course, given the vagueness of the history, accurately identifying those elements would be a non-trivial task.", and "...my excruciatingly limited reading on the subject suggests that...", to convey the points that such elements have not been identified yet, that my suggestions are tentative, and that any real progress in this direction would require a lengthy period of study by genuinely knowledgeable people to determine which elements were adopted into Daoism at what times and for what reasons. Nevertheless, I don't find any support in the few earlier works that I've read, such as the DDJ or the Zhuangzi, for the inclusion of specific Chinese deities into Daoism, nor do I see that their presence in any way enhances the tradition. What value I've found in Daoism so far seems to come from the earlier works. Mind you, I have no problem with considering contemporary mainstream Daoism legitimate, and if people get something out of the elements that were added later than I'm happy for them. I simply lament the loss of what seems to me the earlier form, and would like to see it come into existence once again as another sect. As far as my use of the words "organization" and "movement" I didn't comment because I don't see the relevance. My original post stated that "Daoism in the West is not heading in this direction, and even if it were, it still lacks the organization and the strength to create such a movement." This statement is purely descriptive, and means that mainstream (non-Western) Daoism is an established religion with a lot of social inertia behind its structure and practices. If Daoism in the West had hundreds of thousands of adherents, all sharing an originalist doctrine, then cross-cultural influences might act so as to cause mainstream Daoism to create a new offshoot (i.e. a new movement) with a more originalist doctrine. But since Western Daoism lacks organization and strength it's more likely that cross-cultural influences will cause mainstream Daoism to shape Western Daoism rather than the other way around.
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I'm sure there would be many different opinions about that. I would start by identifying and removing those elements that were added during the late Han dynasty as part of the effort to convert Daoism into a structured religious movement. Of course, given the vagueness of the history, accurately identifying those elements would be a non-trivial task. As one example, my excruciatingly limited reading on the subject suggests that most, if not all, of the Daoist pantheon was added around that time in an attempt to popularize Daoism. That is, if the newly formed Daoism was to bring in the bacon (tithes, social/political influence, etc...) then it had to bring in the masses. This meant getting the masses into the temples. The target demographic practiced their version of what we now refer to as "Chinese folk religion", which included the non-church-based worship of a large number of deities, with different groups of people worshiping different deities. It seems that, in order to bring them in, the Daoists of the day simply declared that Daoism now included the worship of said deities, and if you want to worship them properly then you'd better come to the temples where all the fancy new statues are and do it right. Repeat the message long enough and sooner or later people will begin to believe it. Instant flock. If this is the case then a good first move to returning Daoism to its roots would be to delete the entire Daoist pantheon and all observances and rituals associated with them. I've also got my suspicions about both celibacy and vegetarianism, and others have posted elsewhere to the effect that practices like martial arts, Feng Shui, and the like are all add-ons made centuries and even millennia later. If this is the case then dump them all.
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OK. That one's going into my permanent memory store.
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Sorry. IMHO, no. Meat eating is natural for omnivores. Humans are omnivores. The fact that we can, with sufficiently careful supplementation, survive well even on a vegan diet doesn't change this. While it can be argued that "intensive farming" of meat is both cruel and unnatural, and I would agree, this doesn't change the fact that human consumption of meat is, in itself, natural. I would expect Daoists, of all people, to have respect for nature, including even its unpleasant aspects. Today there are Daoist sects that practice vegetarianism. I believe that this came from two sources. First, borrowings from Buddhism. Second, necessity. Meat was very scare and expensive in China around the time of the Han dynasty. Newly formed Daoist monasteries would have had many mouths to feed, little ability to acquire meat. and no desire to listen to a large group of monks constantly complaining about the restricted diet. The simplest solution for the head monks would have been to make a virtue out of a necessity, and suddenly experience a divine revelation to the extent that true devotion to Daoism required that one become a vegan. Instant cost savings. No more complaints. And it gives the monks a relatively harmless form of hardship to experience as part of their devotions, which is generally good psychology when you're trying to run a monastery. And if you don't think that even genuinely holy people who are in charge of groups think in such a Machiavellian fashion then I don't know what world you've been living in but it isn't this one. Include it in the official canon and a generation later every Daoist is convinced that he should be a vegan too. Daoism is not Buddhism, and the changes made to Daoism to convert it into an organized religion/church during the Han dynasty were made for reasons of convenience, political necessity, and mass appeal, not because they were part of the original doctrine. Hopefully one day Daoism will purge itself of all of this and revert to its original, pre-Han-dynasty roots.
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I don't think that this is quite correct. The simplest and most direct way to end a small war might be to drop a nuke, but I wouldn't call that an application of wú wéi. There's an extent to which you're trying to interfere with nature as little as is possible, and to let nature do the heavy lifting for you. Imagine that the part of nature that you want to affect is a stream. Now imagine that there are two ways that you can accomplish something. One is very simple, and in the metaphor of the stream it requires that you throw a grenade into the stream, causing massive damage to the stream, all of the life within it, possibly even causing it to change course and interfere with other parts of the environment. Now imagine that you can achieve your goal by walking along the shore and sticking your finger into the stream here, and then here, and then here, each time creating a few small ripples that only last for a few seconds. This might be much less simple and direct, but I would consider it a much better application of wú wéi. Often it will turn out that the method used is very simple and direct, and this can give the illusion that simplicity and directness are the qualities being sought. But this is just a side-effect of the way that nature works.
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Agreed. I know that you intended this as humor, but it actually hits on a very important aspect of Daoism. A lot of the DDJ seems to have been written as an anti-Confucian sociopolitical manifesto, in response to how the Confucian government of the day was mismanaging things, and hurting a lot of people in the process. I see little in it to suggest that the author(s) would have rejected the idea of smacking some heads to make things better, if that could have been made to work. The rampant pacifism that we see today in Daoism seems to have come from a number of sources, including early borrowings from Buddhism, later pressures from a Chinese government that won't tolerate the presence of any organization that it sees as a potential political threat, and deliberate spin from the Western "New Age" movement, which is determinedly pacifistic and has been insinuating itself into Daoism in the West for many years. I believe that many people who consider themselves to be Daoist today are really misplaced Buddhists (a genuinely pacifistic religion), or at least would be happier in one of the syncretic religious traditions that explicitly combines elements of Buddhism and Taoism. Unfortunately, contemporary Daoism has drifted so far from its classical (roughly pre-200 AD) roots that it seems to have become such a syncretism itself. it would be nice to see a new offshoot of Daoism form; one that rejected the post-Classical elements of the Daoist cannon (which is most of it) and returned to a more originalist view, but I can't see that happening any time soon. The Chinese government certainly wouldn't allow it, and I suspect that other authoritarian Asian governments would probably react similarly. Daoism in the West is not heading in this direction, and even if it were, it still lacks the organization and the strength to create such a movement.
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Phi92: The short answer is this. "Wú wéi" literally translates as something like "without action". The exact meaning of the phrase depends on the context. Often it's used to refer to acting in a minimalist fashion to achieve your goals. It might also refer to arranging your affairs such that they proceed successfully with no further action on your part. In some cases it might refer to achieving a goal with no overt action at all. For example, if you're trying to get a student to understand something, and he's very close, then instead of explaining the final point to him you might simply stare at him pointedly, as if to say "the answer is right in front of you", with the intent that he'll work it out for himself in the next few seconds. In this context the stare is taken as an example of "not acting", and the pointed silence is supposed to motivate the student to take the final step that achieves the goal. Your best bet in understanding any particular instance of this phrase is to translate the surrounding context, and then interpret the phrase in that context in the fashion that I've described above. Of course, as always, most Daoists will disagree vehemently with what I've just written, and probably get very upset about it.
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So is it fair to say that all sects of Daoism espouse acting in accordance with the three treasures, often translated as benevolence, frugality, and humility? If this is the case, then can we go a step further and state that espousing a doctrine that encourages one to act in accordance with the three treasures is a necessary, although possibly not sufficient, condition for being considered a Daoist sect?
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Before this thread goes too much further it might be wise to reconsider the question. Are you really concerned with the phrase "wú wéi", which might be translated as "inaction", or the phrase "wéi wú wéi", which might be translated as "acting without action". They mean different things. You started by asking about the first, but your discussion made it seem as if you're really interested in the second. I've seen these two phrases confused several times before.
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My best advice at this stage in my understanding is to start with the "three jewels". While there's a lot more, much of it seems to be refinements, expansions, and applications of those ideals.
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IMHO Yes. I got far more mileage out of my attempts to translate the DDJ when I started using etymological dictionaries with historical usages of the words.
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In order to be useful, a description of Daoism would have to be applicable without the need for significant amounts of non-trivial interpretation. For example, if I were trying to provide a description of Catholicism that could be used to answer the question "Is Joe a Catholic?", I might start out by referring to the Pope's pronouncements on matters of faith, and state that one necessary, but not sufficient, condition to be considered a Catholic is that one must abide by the Pope's statements on such matters. I might then provide a list of said statements, including statements regarding contraception, confession, etc. In order to have a useful description of Daoism that could be used to answer the question "Is this sect Daoist?" I must have a similar list of criteria by which Daoism is defined. In areas where there's no agreement, possibly because the DDJ (assuming that that's your only source) is too cryptic, I might have a collection of acceptable options. If it was impossible to get any agreement on what some part of the DDJ meant, it would have to be left out of the description entirely, at least for the moment. I should note that it's inevitably at this point where discussions on this matter seem to break down. Generally for the same reasons. Some people find that Daoism is too vague to allow for a useful description, and some feel that even if one could generate such a description it would be wrong to do so, because it would allow for the exclusion of people who want to think of themselves as Daoist, but aren't. i.e. one group thinks that Daoism is not definable, the other group thinks that Daoism mandates that any form of exclusion is evil. Oddly, I've seen the same person express a dislike for the idea of a useful description of Daoism, while simultaneously lamenting the presence of charlatans who take people's money in return for fake Daoist training sessions. i have no idea how they expected to deal with the problem of Daoist scams without a useful set of criteria by which to determine if a given "teacher" is Daoist. Perhaps it might be useful to begin with a comparison of specific cases. What are the differences between various schools of Daoism in China? Given some property (1) of Daoism, and a Daoist sect for which said property had the value 'a', and another Daoist sect for which said property had the value 'b', we might decide that one necessary condition for a sect to be considered Daoist was that property 1 had to have a value of either a or b. And so forth. Or we might start by drawing distinctions across religions. For example, I believe that there's a religion called Santeria that allows for religious animal sacrifices. By this I mean animal sacrifices such that the slain animal is not to be used for food, but is killed solely for the sake of the sacrifice. Does Daoism mandate this? Or allow it? If Daoism doesn't allow it, then we might state that one necessary condition for a sect to be considered Daoist is that it doesn't accept sacrificing animals for religious purposes. Chip away at the marble block long enough and a statue should begin to emerge.
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Then perhaps it would be useful to attempt it here and now.
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So it would probably be useful to have a non-culture-specific description of Daoism.
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I'm surprised at a sentiment that I seem to see reflected here occasionally, that there can be no such thing as "American Daoism". If my understanding is correct then there's more than one Daoist sect in China. Moreover, Daoist sects exist in countries other than China. Most, if not all of them, are considered legitimate. What if a new sect, called "Earthly Masters", came to exist in China. Would you reject its authenticity solely because it was new, or would you judge it on its own merits? What if an identical sect came to exist in America, and instead of being called "Earthly Masters" it was called "American Daoism". Would you reject it solely because you didn't like the name? Or the country of origin? Or would you judge it on its own merits? If it's possible for a new Daoist sect to arise in China today and be legitimate, then isn't it also possible for a new Daoist sect to arise in America today and be legitimate? In my initial post in the "Lobby" I wrote that I was "Slowly working on my own translation of the DDJ". Someone responded "1,000 Monks = 1,000 different Translations of the DDJ." In a Daoist forum on another system (LinkedIn) I've noted the extreme lack of judgmentalism exhibited by most Daoists. Why then, if Daoists are so loathe to be judgmental, do some so quickly lose this reticence and leap to deny even the possibility of a legitimate, culturally American offshoot of Daoism, while simultaneously accepting the legitimacy of multiple Daoist offshoots existing both within and across multiple Asian countries, each with its own culture? My sense is that some Daoists aren't drawn to Daoism as much as they're drawn to a sort of idealized, Western vision of Asian culture (reverence for the venerable master, highly ritualized tea ceremonies, ancient wisdom being passed down to worthy students, and so forth). That is, they seem drawn to Daoism as the religion that most strongly satisfies their latent sinophilia. Once they become Daoists, they're reticent to accept the idea of Daoism without Asian culture, as if it delegitimizes their own beliefs. At some point recently I read on TaoBums a post to the extent that a necessary part of being a Daoist was a reverence for this and that element of Chinese culture (humility when learning at the feet of the master, appreciation of ritual, etc...). I got the sense that, had the poster been Catholic, he would have written that in order to be a good Catholic one had to like Italian food. Religions travel and adapt constantly. Perhaps it might be helpful to consciously divorce sinophilia from Daoism before considering the idea of an American offshoot. After all, there's a Catholic church in China. There are mosques in France. There are even adherents of Voodoo in the US. Is there some reason that Daoism can't adapt too, and still be Daoism? Another good question to ask might be "What is Daoism"? After all, how can you argue about whether or not there can be an "American Daoism" if you can't state what "Chinese Daoism" is in terms that allow for a comparison?
