Decades of Dao

In which I don't define Daoism

Daoism is the philosophy with which I find myself most closely aligned, and which I find closest to my heart. What a shame, then, that its most famous line, from the opening of the Dao De Jing, definitively asserts that the Dao cannot be spoken!

This difficulty notwithstanding, I find myself more in line with Daoism than with the less obscure and more readily practicable Buddhism. My heart and mind align more with the Dao than with many of my more obvious influences, like Schopenhauer, Jaynes, Nietzsche, Kuhn, Pyrrho of Elis, Sextus Empiricus, Darwin, or even Tolstoy.

I find myself returning decade after decade to the Dao De Jing — and chasing the Zhuangzi.

What is Daoism?

Daoism comes from an Ancient Chinese philosophy. “Dao” means “way.” A “Daoist” follows the Dao, follows the way, is a wayfarer.

What is the Dao?

Extremely difficult to say, though not altogether impossible, otherwise, presumably, the Dao De Jing could not have been written so fruitfully. As a starting place, the Dao is a paradoxical path which finds that the small overcomes the great, the weak wears down the strong, non-interference beats meddling, and effortless action outdoes striving. To follow the Dao is to live with an attitude of flexibility, spontaneity, and a high tolerance for not knowing. In some formulations it opposes conceptual knowledge.

What about De and Jing?

De means “virtue” or “power,” but it’s “virtue” more in the sense of “by virtue of” than the boring Platonic virtues which Socrates never shuts up about. Jing means “classic.” So roughly Dao De Jing means “Classic of the Way and (its) Virtue or Power.”

Is the Dao the same as the Tao?

Yes.

Chinese has been transliterated into English in different ways. The newer system is called Pinyin and it writes “Dao.” The older system is called Wade–Giles, and it writes “Tao.” So you may have see both spellings. They are the same word. I use the two spellings interchangeably, since the Tao that can be spelled is not the eternal Dao — more on that later.

In what follows, I will give the newer Pinyin spelling first and the older Wade–Giles in parentheses, mainly because you otherwise might not realize that you’ve come across what I’m talking about.

Who are the Daoists?

The two most important thinkers in Daoism are Laozi (formerly “Lao-Tzu”), traditionally credited with having written the Dao De Jing (Tao Te Ching), and Zhuang Zhou (“Chuang-tzu”), who wrote a text called the Zhuangzi.

The “modern” association of Laozi (~5th or 4th century BCE) with Zhuangzi (~369–286 BCE) under the banner of “Daoism” came together during the Han Dynasty (206 BCE–220 AD).

This period grouped Laozi and Zhuangzi as “Daoist” thinkers as opposed to “Confucian” thinkers (most famously Confucius and Mencius). This division persists to this day, although the concept of “Dao” (or “way”) was important in all Chinese philosophy of the period, including Confucianism.

But Confucius’ conception of the Dao was very different from the conception in the Dao De Jing, and some verses of the Dao (e.g. 18) do seem to directly conflict with the teachings of Confucius. Later Daoist literature sometimes presents Laozi as conversing with Confucius, normally to the humiliation of the latter, but such conversations are anachronistic.

Traditional and legendary dating would put the Dao De Jing in the 6th century BC, making it contemporary with Confucius (~551–479 BCE), the Buddha (~563–480 BCE), and the Greek pre-Socratics like Heraclitus (545–475 BCE) and Parmenides (~515–475 BCE). But the earliest excavated copies of the Dao De Jing date to the late 4th century BC, and it’s my impression that modern scholarship wants to place at least parts of the Dao De Jing in that later period.

This would make the Dao De Jing contemporary with the Hellenistic philosophers like the awesome Pyrrho of Elis, and closer to the traditional lifespan of Zhuangzi than that of Laozi.

Though traditional dating places it earlier, then, Daoism probably starts during the Hundred Schools of Thought period (500–221 BCE), which includes the end of the Spring and Autumn Period and most of the the Warring States Period.

Daoism was one of about five schools from these “Hundred Schools of Thought” which survived the notorious purges at the end of that period, called the “Burning of books and burying of scholars,” in 213 BCE. Modern scholars believe that emperor Qin Shi Huang did indeed destroy many texts, and may well have killed scholars, but probably not by burying them alive. I’ve been curious for decades what the other ninety-five schools must have been like, but I’m very glad that Daoism made it through.

Is it a philosophy or a religion?

No, not really, and yes, maybe both. It’s complicated, because “philosophy” is a Greek idea, and “religion” is an Roman/Abrahamic idea. Daoism pre-dates Chinese contact with either of these ways of thinking about thinking. Westerners often want to divide Daoism into two parts, the first, a mystical textual tradition or philosophy, then later a religious tradition. The followers of the Dao themselves never did this, and Daoism itself is kind of opposed to divisions anyway. See this for more.

What about the Yijing (I Ching?)

I’m glad you asked. The Yijing is a much older divination text, with some parts dating back to the Western Zhou (1000–750 BCE). But it prefigures Daoism in spirit, because many of its passages advise flexibility and waiting to see over decisive action. Yi means “changes,” so the Yijing is the “classic of changes.”

What is Daoism like?

Also a great question. Let’s let these precious texts introduce themselves, to any readers unfamiliar with them. The translations of the Dao De Jing and vary wildly; there are fewer translations of the Zhuangzi, which is longer and more difficult to translate.

The Dao, as sinologist and translator of Zhuangzi A. C. Graham argued, is weirdly rewarding to translate. Some people with no Chinese surprise sinologists with good ways of putting things. This also makes it very fun to read the different translations. I use this Terebess site where you can find dozens of English translations. I’ve also built a tool that allows comparing them; if anyone wants me to write a piece on translations or accessing the Dao, please reply and let me know.

Dao De Jing

The Dao De Ching is short, consisting of around 5,000 characters split into 81 sections, often called “verses.” They are poems, and, in Chinese, about 75% of the Dao is written in rhyme.

Here is the classic first verse in the classic Dao De Jing (trans. Addiss & Lombardo):¹

Tao called Tao is not Tao. Names can name no lasting name.

Nameless: the origin of heaven and earth. Naming: the mother of ten thousand things.

Empty of desire, perceive mystery. Filled with desire, perceive manifestations.

These have the same source, but different names.

Call them both deep — Deep and again deep: the gateway to all mystery.

A common way of translating the first line is “The Tao that can be spoken is not the eternal Tao” (trans. Derek Lin). Hence my earlier jokes that Daoism is indescribable, and that it doesn’t much matter how you spell it. I want to come back to “nameless” and “naming” in a later post.

Zhuangzi

Here is the opening of the later Taoist classic, the Zhuangzi (~286 BC). The text has the same name as its author, though there are also “Inner Chapters” which are more definitively attributed to the historical figure Zhuangzi than some of the other passages (“Outer Chapters.”) Unlike Laozi, who writes impersonally, like the God of Genesis, Zhuangzi has a discernable personality, especially in the second section of the “Inner Chapters.”

This, to me, is philosophy (trans. A. C. Graham):

In the North Ocean there is a fish, its name is the K’un; the K’un’s girth measures who knows how many thousand miles. It changes into a bird, its name is the P’eng; the P’eng’s back measures who knows how many thousand miles. When it puffs out its chest and flies off, its wings are like clouds hanging from the sky. This bird when the seas are heaving has a mind to travel to the South Ocean. (The South Ocean is the Lake of Heaven.) In the words of the Tall stories, ‘When the P’eng travels to the South Ocean, the wake it thrashes on the water is three thousand miles long, it mounts spiralling on the whirlwind ninety thousand miles high, and is gone six months before it is out of breath.’ (The Tall stories of Ch’i is a record of marvels.) Is the azure of the sky its true colour? Or is it that the distance into which we are looking is infinite? It never stops flying higher till everything below looks the same as above (heat-hazes, dust-storms, the breath which living things blow at each other).

[…] If the mass of the wind is not bulky enough it lacks the strength to carry the great wings. So it is only when the bird is ninety thousand miles high, with the wind underneath it, that it rests its weight on the wind; and it must have the blue sky on its back and a clear view ahead before it will set its course for the South.

A cicada and a turtle-dove laughed at it, saying, ‘We keep flying till we’re bursting, stop when we get to an elm or sandalwood, and sometimes are dragged back to the ground before we’re there. What’s all this about being ninety thousand miles up when he travels south?’

I couldn’t find any good orientalizing images

I can still remember reading those thrilling words twenty years ago.

I realize that, after all that, I feel I’ve still not really said anything about Daoism. But saying nothing is among the most Daoist things one can do.

Dao De Jing 56 (trans. Lau):

One who knows does not speak;
One who speaks does not know.

I’d love to hear from you,

Bryan

1. This is a joke, since, as you’ve learned, Jing means classic.