Daoism

A Contemporary Philosophical Investigation

Livia Kohn

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2019
• ISBN:
  9781351396110
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Theology & Religion
• Subtopic: Religion

Daoism: A Contemporary Philosophical Investigation explores philosophy of religion from a Daoist perspective. Philosophy of religion is a thriving field today, increasingly expanding from its traditional theistic, Christian roots into more cosmologically oriented Asian religions. This book raises a number of different issues on the three levels of cosmos, individual, and society, and addresses key questions like:

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• What are the distinctive characteristics of Daoist thought and cosmology?

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• How does it approach problems of creation, body, mind, and society?

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• What, ultimately, is Dao?

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• How does it manifest and play a role in the world?

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• What are the key features of Daoist communities and ethics?

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• What role does the body play in Daoism?

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• What do Daoists think is the relationship between language and reality?

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• What is Daoist immortality?

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• How do Daoists envision the perfect life on earth?

The volume delves into philosophical subject matter in a way that is accessible to those approaching the topic for this first time, while also making an original contribution to Daoist philosophy of religion. This volume is suitable for use by undergraduate and graduate students studying Chinese religion and philosophy, as well as more general introductory courses on Daoism.

Part I

Reality

1Ultimate reality

Ultimate reality, the absolute, the core power of all existence, by definition is eternal, self-created, independent, creative, unchanging, as well as omnipresent, omniscient, and omnipotent. Underlying and pervading all, it is a “power or force which centers and gives definiteness to the life of a human community.”¹ Being ultimate or absolute, it can never be properly expressed in language, whether abstract in philosophical discourse or concrete in myth, because language is itself part of the created world. Its expression can only approximate, symbolize, or give metaphors for what is forever unknowable and ineffable. Both philosophy and myth, therefore, describe ultimate reality by pointing to primordial chaos, an uncharted void, or formless emptiness, from which oneness arises as the first sign that things have begun to take shape and will eventually become definable, that creation can now proceed.

Existence thus grows from ultimate reality, yet it is never separate from it. When the question is raised whether existence or its underlying formlessness ultimately is the absolute, the answer is always “Both!” The difference between life and its primordial state is never one of fundamental quality but always one of gradation. The ultimate in its concentrated form is in the center, at the beginning of creation; in its differentiated form, it is present in everything that exists—visible, knowable, and capable of being put into words. The transition between the two occurs either through evolution or disruption, either through the interaction of natural elements or the power of a transcendent creator, described in philosophical and cosmological discourse as occurring in phases of cosmic diversification and expressed in myth with the help of various symbols, images, and narratives.²

Dao

The ultimate in Daoism is Dao, the concept that gave the religion its name. The word originally means “way” and its character consists of the signs for eye and walking plus a cross indicating direction. Both traditionally and today it is used in this concrete sense, pointing to a road and by extension a method and related explanations. Given this general sense, the term has been used philosophically to indicate the way of the universe, the way human beings are in the world, the best way of social integration, the way of rulership, and more. For the most part, as Chad Hansen points out, it referred to particular ways of doing or managing things, connected to a specific place, time, social setting, and individual.³

The more metaphysical dimension of the term appears first in the Daode jing, which begins with the famous words, “The Dao that can be dao’ed [told] is not the constant Dao” (ch. 1). That is to say, it postulates that beyond all the various ways of skill mastery, governance, and academic discourse, there is Dao as a cosmic ground, an essence or source of all, an inherent way of being that applies universally. It is constant, invisible, inaudible, and subtle (ch. 14), the origin of heaven and earth (ch. 1), the mother of the universe (ch. 25), always empty yet never exhausted (ch. 4). The core force of the universe, Dao pervades all there is and, however inaccessible to ordinary sensing and knowing, continues to flow in the creative process of all existence free from metaphysical rupture. Without any exterior input or modification, Dao is a perpetuum mobile that does not depend on anything. Essentially immanent, it can never become the object of knowing; part of the realm beyond color, sound, and form, before there are things, Dao is free from distinctions, values, and borders. Not a material substance or even energy, it is a process of circular movement, blending and coalescing forces, so that vitality can gush forth in continuous emergence.⁴

Benjamin Schwartz describes it as “organic order.” Dao is organic in the sense that it is part of the world and not a transcendent other as in Western religions; it is also order because it can be felt in the rhythms of the world, in the manifestation of organized patterns. Cheng Chung-ying explains its dimensions in terms of language: cosmic Dao is pre-language, whole, and circular; representational Dao is communicable, partial, and linear. Eske Møllgaard speaks of it as both visible and invisible, transcendent and immanent, latent but not beyond, the continuous flow of experience coming into being.⁵

One way to think of Dao is as two concentric circles, a smaller one in the center and a larger on the periphery. The dense, smaller circle in the center is Dao at the root of creative change—tight, concentrated, intense, and ultimately unknowable, ineffable, and beyond conscious or sensory human attainment (Daode jing, chs. 6, 14, 25). The larger circle at the periphery is Dao as it appears in the world, the patterned cycle of life and visible nature. Here we can see Dao as it comes and goes, rises and sets, rains and shines, lightens and darkens—the ever-changing yet everlasting, cyclical alteration of natural patterns, life and death (chs. 2, 9, 22, 36). This is Dao as natural transformations: the metamorphoses of insects, ways of bodily dissolution, and the inevitable entropy of life. This natural, tangible Dao is what people can study and learn to create harmony in the world; the cosmic, ineffable Dao, on the other hand, they need to open to by resting in clarity and stillness to find true authenticity in living.

The bipartite division of Dao as manifest and intangible is bridged in communal Daoism by identifying Laozi, the sage at the root of the Daode jing, with the central force of his teaching, transforming him into a conscious, active deity who not merely unfolds into the world but actively creates it. Ultimately identical with Dao, he is the entirety of life; with all the powers of a transcendent god, he yet reaches beyond the forces of the universe and manifest on earth in various forms.

The first record of this deification of Dao appears in the Shengmu bei (Stele for the Holy Mother) of the year 153 ce, found at a temple in honor of Laozi at his birthplace in Bozhou (modern Henan). It begins,

Laozi, the Dao:

Born prior to the formless,

Grown before great beginning,

He lives in the prime of great immaculate

And floats freely through the six voids.

He passes in and out of darkness and confusion,

Contemplating chaos as yet undifferentiated,

Viewing the clear and turbid in primordial union.

Laozi here is a celestial deity who forms part of Dao before creation yet also stands apart from it, being able to float through it and view it as if from a distance. More details appear in the Laozi bianhua jing (Scripture of the Transformations of Laozi), a cult-related work dated to around 185. It says,

Laozi rests in the great beginning and wanders in the great origin,

Floats through dark, numinous emptiness… .

He joins serene darkness before its opening,

Is present in original chaos before the beginnings of time. …

Alone and without relation, he exists before heaven and earth.

Living deeply hidden, he always returns to be:

Latent: primordial; present: a man!⁶

Laozi as the body of Dao, therefore, represents the creative, ordering power of the universe that transforms and creates the world. Both primordial and embodied as human, he can be anything and everything, is flexible and yet stable. As the text says,

Laozi can be bright or dark, latent or present,

Big or small, rolled up or stretched out,

Above or below, vertical or horizontal, last or first.

There is nothing he cannot do, nothing he will not accomplish.

In fire he does not burn, in water he does not freeze.

He meets with evil without suffering, confronts disasters without affliction.

Opposed, he is not pained, harmed, he is not scarred.

Laozi lives forever and does not die, but merely dissolves his bodily form.

Single and without counterpart, alone and without dependence,

He is yet joined with all and never separate.⁷

Here the deity is not merely a personification of Dao, the formless, spontaneous force that creates by unfolding naturally and without external guidance. He is also a conscious creator who stands alone, has knowledge and volition, and takes active steps in guiding the world. He unites the two poles of the absolute, collapses the two circles of Dao into one—representing ultimate reality in all its complexity and contradictions.

Oneness

Another form ultimate reality takes in Daoism is as oneness or “the One” (yi), a state of highest unity at the brink of creation, the first level of unified existence after the cosmic void. As the Daode jing says, “Dao brings forth the One,” which in turn divides into the two, the polar opposites that make up the created world (ch. 42). The Zhuangzi has, “In the Great Beginning there was nonbeing. There was no being, no name. Out of it oneness arose. Then there was oneness, but there was no form. ...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Series Information
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Contents
• Dynastic chart
• Introduction: The nature of Daoism
• Part I Reality
• Part II Humanity
• Part III Community
• Part IV Ethics
• Part V Perfection
• Index