Is it the duty of a Taoist to protect Nature?

[noonespecial]

I dont think the daoist would see himself as anything but nature. 

[Gerard]

Any human has the duty of protecting Nature. It would be like don't bite the hand that feeds you...still humans are worst than demons when it comes to protecting the natural environment. Ignorance, lack of wisdom.

[dust]

Daeluin, that's great. I wasn't aware of your personal situation, I don't think. Awesome.

 

You and Yueya are, based on your posts in this thread describing your lifestyles and what else I know about you from past interaction, shining examples of good living -- and in my opinion of good Taoist living. Way beyond what I'm doing. And I know there are many others on this forum who are too.

 

 

 

And I get it -- if you went around constantly telling people "Hey, look at my life, I'm doing this and that, you should be more like me," it would likely put off as many people as it attracted. Atheists, vegans, crossfitters, etc, are all known for making their opinions known and are derided for it by people who don't share their views, and society then perhaps starts to become slightly anti-atheist, anti-vegan, anti-crossfit, etc. (not that I'm defending crossfit!)

 

And it's a losing battle either way. People who do recognize problems tend to look to technology for solutions, rather than looking to fix the roots of the problems. We should take more supplements, we should take more drugs, we should engineer more efficient animals for slaughter, we're going to colonize Mars by the end of the century, and then the galaxy... just so we don't have to change our lifestyles right now. Ego and comfort tends to override logic and compassion!

[Daeluin]

Reading what I wrote, and wow, seems like I'm on a crusade or something. But really it all just fell into place. My mother helped me to develop good environmental values growing up, and that helped me to make good choices. But largely the friends I've made are people who are more active about these things than I am. When the opportunity came to live with them and support the building of this community I knew it would resonate with my values.

 

Some of my friends are just naturally good at following the dao, but they know nothing about the dao that is spoken of. I can't take much credit, other than being in the right place at the right time. I hadn't planned on living in a tiny-house either, but when I asked the universe where I belonged I was directed to this destination.

 

The push and pull of it all, as in telling people what to do, seems related to how yin and yang are always going back and forth without really ever changing their quantity. We find it easy to change their equilibrium, and to manifest new things from them, but it is difficult to merge that yin and yang back into something more primordial. Perhaps that is the key.

[Jim D.]

Today, I failed to pick up an empty plastic water bottle dropped by a person who suffers from Schizophrenia. I felt held back internally to do it right away because I am not his brother's keeper. I am not a servant, or a street cleaner. Now when I take my dog out for her walk, and it is there, I will pick it up and recycle it. I don't need recognition for the deed, nor am I going to bend down to another human being that does not have the integrity to pick up his own waste.

[Geof Nanto]

Thanks for your compliments, Dustybeijing. You’re someone whose comments I respect for their genuineness – even when I don’t entirely agree with your perspective.

 

The topic of this thread is framed from a Confucian / humanist perspective and many of the comments follow that vein. Nothing wrong with that as such, but to my mind it misses the heart of classical Daoism.  For someone seeking to feel the ebb and flow of the living Dao, duties and principles are a great trap.

 

A reworking of Chapter 18 of the Daodejing for modern times……

 

When the great Dao is dispensed with,

Then there is humanity and righteousness.

 

When knowledge and cleverness come out,

Then there is great falsity.

 

When our relationship with the environment is not harmonious,

Then there is ‘Green’ duty and compassion for nature.

 

When the State and people are in confusion,

Then there are principled environmentalists.

[Geof Nanto]

Continued…

 

However, I most certainly appreciate the need for vocal principled environmentalists as a counterbalance for those who advocate unbridled development. I was one myself in my younger days. And it was important for me to be one. But now I’m more interested in gaining insight into the forces that dictate the behavior of both camps; I claim no privileged position to judge the unfolding patterns of Dao.  For the living Dao, growth and destruction go hand in hand. Without death there cannot be new life.    

 

My personal feeling is one of great sadness for the ongoing degradation of our natural environment. But I know I had to partially destroy my own health in order to begin to find myself – it seems such is the Way of nature, both personally and on a global scale. In this sense, we, and all the rest of nature, are like straw dogs – we’re both revered and trampled on, according to our harmonies and disharmonies with the mysterious unfolding of Dao. Whilst, as conscious humans we are somewhat able to rectify our personal disharmonies, we are all nevertheless part of the greater patterns of life of which we have no control. 

[Jim D.]

Well. as I shared earlier, this afternoon when I took my dog for a walk, the plastic empty water bottle was still there. I wonder how many humans passed by it, only to leave it for someone else to pick it up. This sounds like the Good Smaritan story.

 

I picked it up, and carried it a half a block along with my dog's pooh bag and dispensed with each appropriately. I hope the Earth feels good about it. I did because I did what I said I would do.

[dust]

The topic of this thread is framed from a Confucian / humanist perspective and many of the comments follow that vein. Nothing wrong with that as such, but to my mind it misses the heart of classical Daoism. For someone seeking to feel the ebb and flow of the living Dao, duties and principles are a great trap.

 

For some, I know, the question doesn't need to be asked. Nature never needs protection; it does itself, and that's enough.

 

But I think that, before dismissing the question, and before answering it, it is worth asking if the question itself has any validity: whether or not nature/the environment could even be thought of as needing protection, or in other words, whether or not there are any problems with the environment, and then whether or not humans might want to do anything about it.

 

As you know by now, I believe there are severe problems. There are problems on an individual scale, on a local scale, on a national scale, on a global scale. They are problems by human standards, and not by the standards of the Universe, but we feel them nonetheless. Compared to the notion that the Sun will one day run out of juice and the Earth itself will be destroyed, the destruction we wreak is fairly insignificant, but still, it affects us, now and in the future.

 

We can forget the word 'duty'. It is certainly the tendency of any living thing to protect itself. Even the most extreme let-nature-be-Taoists don't believe in literally doing nothing, ever, and letting themselves die from dehydration.

 

So when should we believe that this tendency of all life for self-protection becomes false / unnatural / un-Daoist? If I don't believe literally in Zhuangzi's stories about men inhaling wind and drinking dew and mounting clouds, free from any harm, then I must recognize that being entirely blasé about things is a bit silly.

 

I think Zhuangzi's Perfect Man of Old would probably strike another man down for poisoning the river or destroying the forest.

 

 

A reworking of Chapter 18 of the Daodejing for modern times……

 

When the great Dao is dispensed with,

Then there is humanity and righteousness.

 

When knowledge and cleverness come out,

Then there is great falsity.

 

When our relationship with the environment is not harmonious,

Then there is ‘Green’ duty and compassion for nature.

 

When the State and people are in confusion,

Then there are principled environmentalists.

 

 

One point of ch18, as I've always read it, is that one thing causes the next, and the upright ministers eventually compound all the preceding issues. By the end, there's little to be done. The Way is lost to all but a few. But if the problems are attacked early enough, they can be stopped.

 

As shared by Moeller in his chapter 'Ethics' (Daoism Explained), beginning with Hanfeizi's commentary on DDJ ch63:

 

 

 

'"... good physicians, when treating diseases, attack them when they are still in the capillary tubes. This means that they manage things when they are small. Hence, the saintly man begins to attend to things when it is early enough."

 

Confucian ethics begin, so to speak, when the disease is already in the bones and marrow -- and it is the Confucians' and their morality's own fault that the illness could develop that far. The Daoists, on the contrary, try to 'manage things when they are small' and to 'Attend to things when it is early enough'.'

 

 

 

Environmentalists are not the Confucians in this story. The Confucians are the technologists and the bad physicians, the type of people who are always looking to "improve" the world with creations, treating symptoms rather than causes, and thus taking the world further and further from health. Environmentalists are, in this story, the good physicians. The ones looking to treat the disease at the root, before it's too late. Not because it's righteous, but because it's what physicians do.

[Daeluin]

I think Zhuangzi's Perfect Man of Old would probably strike another man down for poisoning the river or destroying the forest.

 

Why? If he sees clearly, he also sees the penalty already being paid for poisoning the river or destroying the forest. And just as there is such a penalty, there would be one for his act of revenge, for how is striking down one thing down different from striking down another?

 

When something is struck down, it suffers trauma. When the river returns, it will need to overcome that trauma and the fear that it is unwanted (the spirit(s) of the river constantly attempting to digest that pollution). The human who destroys the river who lives on, is suffering from the consequences of its actions and has an opportunity to learn from those actions, and to change. Those consequences may be easy to hide from at first, but they exist non-the-less, and become more and more evident over time as karmic taxes. Perhaps the human can be guided. As long as the human is alive there is time for it to atone. But the human who is struck down then also suffers trauma from being struck down, and returns predominately focused on overcoming that trauma, not easily making the connection to the actions of its previous lifetime, which it does not remember aside from the intense imprintings related to the patterns of lessons it faces immediately following re-birth. And perhaps it fights harder using the same mentality that caused it to destroy the river in the first place. How then does quickly striking down the destructive human help either rivers or destructive humans?

 

I wonder, if we are mainly tasked with preserving balance when things are small, why then should we tackle huge problems that are not small? Is it not simpler to start at the imbalances within, and so prevent those imbalances from being projected externally where they could become magnified beyond our control? How do we presume to know the proper external balance of things? It could be the engineers who made the once twisting and winding Kissimmee river straight thought that they were helping to improve upon its environmental impact by preventing flooding. However their presumption that they knew what was right had devastating consequences:

 

 

Of course undoing the things we recognize as having damaging consequences is very important work. Sometimes it is very clear. However, we still need to remember that treating the disease at the root is not merely undoing the damage caused, but healing the reason we thought it was OK do do the damage in the first place, which comes from leaving the dao - the center - in favor of humanity and righteousness, cleverness and knowledge. It comes of presumptuous actions (that are often very well informed and knowledgeable, making them easy to attach to and thus one becomes more closed to sensing future implications beyond an immediate result). When we are able to return to the dao within ourselves, we are also better prepared to heal others at the root, which better presents to them the opportunity to correct their karmic mistakes in a way that makes them desire to do so. When we tell them what they are doing is wrong and why it is wrong, it is just a clash of righteousness against righteousness, which has its own environmental consequences. This dance is perpetuated as each side becomes more entrenched, and unless we dissolve these entrenchments and go deeper, warring behavior can manifest.

 

Sometimes dissolving entrenchment and going deeper requires going beyond words, for when the human mind has become the master, it can be very attached to its momentum, and fighting it with more words simply creates trauma and more entrenchment at the mental level, enforcing and augmenting the blockage that is already clogging up the other systems and causing illness. But love might melt away its fixations and open its heart to seeing clearly, dissolving the blockages and perhaps creating an openness where one is not as inclined to feel the need to fight to survive, and this openness can yield more openness, more balance.

 

Humanity and righteousness are a polarized pair, sometimes associated with the phases of wood and metal. This benevolence and judgment (as they are also translated) can heal each other and help to heal the disconnection from dao. Judgment against judgment creates an entrenchment of judgment, which is a lot of metal stagnation.

 

Liu Yiming uses the five confucian virtues of humanity 仁, righteousness 義/义, social harmony 禮/礼, wisdom 智, and sincerity 信 to show a pattern (following the interplay of the wuxing) of how they may abuse each other and become stuck, disconnected from the dao, and how they may follow sincerity and integrity to integrate and fuse with one another, dissolving stagnation and returning to harmony:

 

 

 

 

The Lo Writing

 

The Lo Writing (Lo Shu) is another of the most ancient artifacts of Chinese civilization. Whereas the River Diagram (He Tu) is traditionally considered to be of prehistoric origin and associated with the primal Tao, the Lo Writing is attributed to historical times and associated with the temporal Tao.

 

Like the River Diagram, the Lo Writing is said to have been found in the pattern on the back of a supernatural creature, this time an uncanny turtle that emerged from the Lo River at the time of a great flood in the late third millennium B.C.E. The River Diagram is associated with the time of the prehistorical culture hero Fu Hsi, whose work is thought of as creative, while the Lo Writing is associated with the time of the later king Yu, a quasi-historical culture hero whose work is thought of in terms of rescue and salvation.

 

To illustrate the idea, Liu I-ming says of the Lo Writing, "Nature has the quality of love for life, so it used an uncanny turtle to divulge the Tao of restoration and return, to guide people to return home and recognize their origin, to set their feet on the fundamental basis of [xing] and [ming]."

 

The design of the Lo Writing is very simple, consisting of nine sets of dots - one set in each of the cardinal and intermediate directions and one set in the center - that stand for the yin and yang five elements. In these terms, the "fall" of humankind is described as follows: turbid vitality overcomes the original spirit, the intellectual spirit overcomes the original sense, arbitrary emotions overcome the original [nature], temperamental nature overcomes the original energy, and wandering attention overcomes the original vitality.

 

Liu I-ming summarizes this "fall" in these terms: "The real gets buried and the false runs wild. People have all sorts of emotions, feelings, and desires, developing complex and involuted psychologies. A hundred worries disturb their minds, then the thousand things tax their bodies. They think what is miserable is enjoyable, they think what is false is real. They have entirely lost the original state."

 

The remedy for this is again said to be in the center, which represents will, attention, sincerity, or truthfulness. According to Liu, the set in the center of the Lo Diagram signifies that kindness, justice, courtesy, and wisdom are all rooted in truthfulness, while the surrounding sets represent using truthfulness to operate kindness, justice, courtesy, and wisdom.

 

Truthfulness, Liu continues, has the meaning of true belief: "Truly believe in kindness, and you can be kind. Truly believe in justice, and you can be just. Truly believe in courtesy, and you can be courteous. Truly believe in wisdom, and you can be wise. Truthfulness alone can be kindness, justice, courtesy, and wisdom, all according to the changes that take place in the mind."

 

Pursuing the definition of truthfulness to a deeper level, Liu calls it the means to restore the primal and equates the experience of the return of the primal with truth. For a practical expression of truthfulness as a means, Liu turns to a section of the Taoist classic Tao-te Ching traditionally used as a meditation guide: "In a flash of enlightenment, something is there. In the utter darkness, vitality is there. That vitality is very real, at its center is a truth." This truth, Liu says, is the experience of the return of the primal, attained through profound abstraction.

 

Liu also uses the scheme of the five virtues to elaborate on the outgrowth of this return to truth, or restoration of the primal. When wisdom is based on truthfulness, he says, knowledge is not used randomly; you are free from greed and ambition, your mind is peaceful and its energy is harmonious. Then you are pleased with reality and produce courtesy from within wisdom. When courtesy is based on wisdom, you can harmonize with those unlike yourself and you do not do anything discourteous; impatience sublimates, so that you no longer become angry but instead become just.

 

When justice is based on courtesy, Liu continues, you are just without bias, able to adapt to changes while following guidelines in your actions. Then you delight in good and develop kindness. When kindness is based on justice, you are kind without being weak, as good as possible, without evil, sincerely whole-hearted, without duplicity. Then you are free from selfish desires and are therefore truthful.

 

When truthfulness is based on kindness, forming the final link in the circle, you are steadfast and unwavering; true will appears, and wandering attention quiets down. Celestial and mundane intentions combine, so that you can be joyful, angry, sad, or pleased, all without selfish desire.

 

This state is called the subordination of the temporal [houtian] to the primal [xiantian]; Liu says, "Merged with the design of nature, not conceiving human desires, you return to the origin of life, so that you realize your original self." In Taoist terms, this is called the formation of the spiritual embryo, or the crystallization of the gold pill. In Confucian terms, it is called clarifying the good and returning to the origin. In Buddhist terms, it is called great wisdom reaching the ultimate aim.

 

tl Thomas Cleary, from Taoist Classics Volume 4, I Ching Mandalas, Arcana

 

 

[dust]

Actually, looking at descriptions of the Perfect Man in ZZ, I think he would let things be. I guess I'm not a Perfect Man!
 
"The perfect man has (the charge of) the world - is not the charge great? and yet it is not sufficient to embarrass him. He wields the handle of power over the whole world, and yet it is nothing to him. His discrimination detects everything false, and no consideration of gain moves him. He penetrates to the truth of things, and can guard that which is fundamental. So it is that heaven and earth are external to him, and he views all things with indifference, and his spirit is never straitened by them. He has comprehended the Dao, and is in harmony with its characteristics; he pushes back benevolence and righteousness (into their proper place), and deals with ceremonies and music as (simply) guests: yes, the mind of the perfect man determines all things aright."
 
"He may be described as acting and yet not relying on what he does, as being superior and yet not using his superiority to exercise any control. But now you would make a display of your wisdom to astonish the ignorant; you would cultivate your person to make the inferiority of others more apparent; you seek to shine as if you were carrying the sun and moon in your hands."
 
 

Why? If he sees clearly, he also sees the penalty already being paid for poisoning the river or destroying the forest. And just as there is such a penalty, there would be one for his act of revenge, for how is striking down one thing down different from striking down another?

 
Those of us currently poisoning the river feel it far less than those who live by the river. Nowadays, the river-dweller and river-poisoner can be half a world apart.
 
If a stranger comes to a stream I'm drinking from and pisses in it, I shan't be expected to let it be!

 
 

I wonder, if we are mainly tasked with preserving balance when things are small, why then should we tackle huge problems that are not small? Is it not simpler to start at the imbalances within, and so prevent those imbalances from being projected externally where they could become magnified beyond our control? How do we presume to know the proper external balance of things? It could be the engineers who made the once twisting and winding Kissimmee river straight thought that they were helping to improve upon its environmental impact by preventing flooding. However their presumption that they knew what was right had devastating consequences:

 
There is no "proper balance", I don't think. Only preference.
 
Yes, these are the technologists I was talking about. Those who presume to know how to 'fix' things, which really means changing things unnecessarily. Then their fix needs a fix, and so on, and things spiral out of control.

 

It might still be early enough to 'fix' the root of our problems, if people were only willing to understand. To rewrite ch18 a little,

 

When the Dao is dispensed with, and knowledge and cleverness come out, we really begin to fuck things up.

Edited July 23, 2016 by dustybeijing

[Jim D.]

The Earth will take care of itself as it has since it was born. But when God added man to the equation there should have been instruction about how to get rid of plastic, toxic wastes, pizza boxes, tampon inserts, condums, perfume bottles, pepsi max cans, car batteries, etc. But wait, if God had warned Adam and Eve about all this, the Devil would have said to them that God just does not want to clean it up after Himself after he kicks you out of the Garden of Eden when you decide to listen to good old Lucifer here.

[Rara]

I forget which chapter it is in ZZ but there is a moral that you cannot prech to someone that doesn't want to listen.

 

If you are an activist, you'll find that the people you attract are simply the ones that shared your views anyway. This is why we still haven't seen all the rich drop their jobs and join the left-wing, unemployed youth protests against austerity. And I don't expect that to ever change.

 

Someone close to me is suffering from delusions and paranoia. Have you ever tried convincing someone like that? Impossible!

 

Nature will be fine because enough people care. And if they don't, then governments seem to force people in to doing their bit anyway. But some, evident in this thread, will go the extra mile and make up some shortfalls

 

A question though, for those against cars and machinery...

 

Today I woke up extremely tired from a week of decorating. My calves are so sore that I can barely walk...but I wanted to get out of the house to take glass bottles to the recycling bank - so I hopped in my car, took them down and swung by the DIY store for some Clean Spirit (more environmentally friendly than White Spirit)

 

So is my car so bad for the environment when I went and ran two errands which were intended to help nature?

[Rara]

Well. as I shared earlier, this afternoon when I took my dog for a walk, the plastic empty water bottle was still there. I wonder how many humans passed by it, only to leave it for someone else to pick it up. This sounds like the Good Smaritan story.

 

I picked it up, and carried it a half a block along with my dog's pooh bag and dispensed with each appropriately. I hope the Earth feels good about it. I did because I did what I said I would do.

And if you didn't, some other good soul probably might have. Or a litter picker. Who knows? Let's just hope "The Butterfly Effect" isn't so crazy as we see in the film or The Simpsons otherwise you might have just brought back the dinosaurs.

[Jim D.]

_{I live in a townhouse development. The HOA's attitude is let the resident pick up after themselves. There is an area between the walk and the street they consider the responsibility of the Village. For example, if there is a Hornet's Nest in a tree it is the Village's responsibility to remove it. When I pointed out that Hornets do not know the difference between this and that boundary, there was no answer. The Village says it is the HOA's responsibility. Both clash. My concern was for the children that play near it.}

 

_{With this in mind, the debis whether it is on HOA property, or Village property remains there. Even the Mexican grass cutters mow over it.}

 

_{I do what I can. There is one other neighbor who is like minded. The rest are just enjoying life.}

Edited July 24, 2016 by Jim D.