Life, Nature and the Tao

ChuangTse (Zhuangzi) (莊子)has always been one of my favourite ancient Chinese philosophers. To me, he is the epitome of freedom from the shackles of the life-sapping monotony and intolerable burden to earn more, build bigger and better machinery for the generation of more profit and the rat race for more power, influence or reputation under conditions of contemporary capitalist economy. As part of the joint effort s by the HKSHP and the Yuen Yuen Institute,(玄圓學院) a series of lectures are now being given by various scholars under the theme "The Tao is in Life" (道在生活). I have attended three of such talks. This rekindled my interest in the Taoist (Daoist) (道家) philosophy. So it was with delight that I discovered an article under the title "Life, Nature and the Tao" (人生, 自然, 道--論莊子哲學 ) by Ngan ShiAn ( 顏世安) published under the auspices of the Hong Kong Taoist College under the general editorship of a famous Chinese Taoist scholar Chen GuYing (陳鼓應) in his book Studies on Taoist Culture, Volume 1 in 1992.

 

According to Ngan, we may seek to understand ChuangTse's philosophy through two concepts: life and Nature. The central problem  he seeks to resolve is how to seek liberation from and transcendence of the kind of pitiful, traumatized and depraved life to which human lives had sunk in his times. He hopes that through reflection of the phemenena of life itself to seek an opening and a hope of spiritual transcendence and his conclusion is that this can only be achieved through a return to Nature. In this respect, none of the philosophers of his time had plumbed the secrets of Life as deeply as he did.

 

What is Nature in ChuangTse's mind? First it means a way of life, a pastoral way of life away from the hustle and bustle of city life but it is also a spiritual practice in which the practitioner ceaselessly  explores and exploits the resources of nature within his own body. In this sense, it is an ideal or an ideal form of Life: the natural life. But at the same time, it is also a new avenue of awareness or consciousness raising which allows the processes of Nature to reveal themselves to man, through the reflections by a human consciousness of the mysteries of life and of Nature. To the extent that it is a kind of deliberately disinterested or distanced contemplation of the processes of internal and external Nature, it is a bit like an esthetic experience of the mysteries of life itself. Through such mystical contemplation, one may hope to gain a consciousness, an idea of the nature of the Tao, the Tao of Nature itself. To him, the Tao is the Ultimate concept, and the Ultimate reality and this ultimate concept and reality reveals itself through the processes of Nature. Nature therefore is the ultimate explanation of all that is, of all that exists but to ChuangTse, Nature ought to be at the same time the source of all human values.

 

To ChuangTse, Tao( 道 ) is not just an abstract concept, an abstract principle which underlies all phenomena. It is something very dear to everyone.  In the World (天下), he talks about the ideal embodiment or realization of the Tao:" He comes and goes with the spirit of heaven and earth but does not hold himself above anything, does not question their right or wrong and goes along with worldly conventions. He is so full that it cannot be fathomed. He consorts with the Creator above and is friends with those who have seen through life and death, the alpha and omega below. His nature is vast, open, deep, spacious and free; its aim is to be harmonising and accomodating to the highest degree." (獨與天地精神往來 ，而不倣倪於萬物，不譴是非 ，以與世俗處..彼其充實而不可以，上與造物者遊，下與來外死生無終始者為友。其本也，弘大而辟，深閎而肆；；其於宗也，可謂稠適而上遂矣. Thus there are two aspect of the Tao: the Tao as a creative principle which underlies the all the forms of matter, things and lives and which governs their rise and fall, their origin,  development, decline and death. But at the same time, it is also an ideal towards which the wise man should strive to reach, coolly, calmly and methodically but naturally. But the Tao also suggests to man the kind of method through which that ideal might be reached by the wise man. The Tao is embodied, exemplified and manifested in things, people, Nature, processes and events. In one of its senses, the Tao appears as and is Nature itself. As an ideal, it has a spiritual aspect and may be looked upon as a state of the human mind, a state of human attitude, a state of the human spirit and also standard for human value. In that sense, the Tao may be considered subjective. But it is not entirely subjective. Because the contents of that subjectivity is based on something entirely objective and beyond human subjectivity. The Tao may reveal itself to human subjectivity only in a kind of direct, intuitive mystical contemplation, which can be achieved only through the abandonment of the use of his senses and his reasoning, although he may very well have started off the process of such contemplation and that process of trying to reach a conception and an experience of the Tao by using his senses and his reason. In this sense, the perception of the Tao can only be attained through a method and an experience which is beyond both human senses and human reason.  In this sense, the Tao may be considered to have prescribed or suggested a method for perceiving itself. If one adopts such a method, then one may have a chance of attaining one of the multifacted embodiment of the Tao and in that sense, be said to have merged with and into the Tao and become a part of the Tao. If so, that is a state of liberation from the mundane worries, anxieties and negative emotions of the conventional civilized world. One can then be said to have transcended his senses, his mind, his conventional mental perspective and emotional attitude. The Tao exists thus not only outside the usual or normal bounds of civilsation, in Nature, it also exists outside the bounds of usual or "normal" cognition of the "civilized" mind and conventional emotions and we can only get a glimpse of the actual operation of the Tao in  a very different kind of experience, a quasi-mystical transcendental experience of Nature. In this sense, the Tao thus apprehended is no longer just a matter of a purely "objective" Nature but also a matter of the "reconstitution" of that Nature through a particular type of "subjective" supra-rational and supra-sensorial philosophic and experiential choice. It is in this supra-rational and supra-sensorial philosophic reconnstruction and experiental perception of and merging with of Nature through his consciousness that man may disover and found a basis of his ultimate values, and a model of his existence or a way of life. However, the Tao in itself is not aware of itself. It cannot have an awareness of itself because it is not a sentient being blessed with awareness. It merely acts on everything without being aware that it is so acting. But through human consciousness, the Tao can be said to have "attained" a kind of awareness of itself.  The Tao is present in everything in this world, whether or not they have been perceived by man. In Knowledge Tours the North (知北遊) (KTTN), ChuangTse says to Dong-guo Zi  (東郭子) that the Tao is everywhere,  in the ant (螻蟻), grass (稊) barn millet (稗), glazed tile (瓦甓) , urine and shit ( 尿溺 ). But although the Tao is present everywhere, : "It cannot be heard, that which can be heard is not Tao; it cannot be seen., that which can be seen is not Tao; it cannot be spoken of, that which can be spoken of is not Tao. Is not that form which purports to know what governs form not a form itself?  The Tao ought not be named!"  ( '道不可聞，聞而非也； 道不可見，見而非也 ；道不可言，言而非也。知形形之不形乎！道不當名"). In other words, the Tao is that which contains all forms but is not a form in itself. The Tao can only be defined negatively but not positively. It can only be defined by what it is not. Once it is given  or identified with a definite shape or form or is defined by a particular name, the Tao has to that extent has been limited when to ChuangTse, and also to LaoTse the Tao is infinite, indefinite and boundless and cannot thus be defined. The Tao is the whole of all there is in the universe. The whole cannot be limited or defined by its parts!  The concept of the Tao can only be "suggested" and no suggestion or definition of the Tao can be exhaustive.   To TsuiTaHua (崔大華), there is a spiritual side of the Tao as far as man is concerned because there can be a spiritual embodiment of the Tao in the process called (道體) or the experience or embodiment or the development in the avatar of the Tao in man. It is a process of the development of the "self" towards that which is not "self" or towards the infinity of the Tao, a transcendence of the "self", its sublimation and an ascent of its spiritual level which enables it to participate in or to exemplify the highest Tao and to partially merge with the Tao like a drop of water merging into a river or an ocean. ,

 

ChuangTse lived in an age of great political strife and confusion, an age of transition in which the old order and traditions were disintegrating and a new order and tradition had not yet been established. It was an age in which a new class of scholar/philosopher/lofficials arose who were to lay the theoretical/philosophical/political/cultural foundation of Chinese moral and political thoughts for the succeeding 2000 years.  Many were then trying their best to re-establish order through the concept of "doing something" positive to re-organize society and social and political life, like the Confucians (儒家), the Mohists (墨家), the Legalists (法家) like X'unTse (荀子), in ways which, to ChuangTse, had strayed from the ways laid down by Nature and hence by what he conceived of as the Tao. To him, men have failed miserably in this futile enterprise. The struggle for survival in the political and military jungle was fraught with selfishness, suspicion, intriques, revenge, violence and deaths. Therefore to him, their only salvation is the path of returning to the ways of Nature itself. But this was not going to be easy. To him, it would require the deepest reflection and the highest wisdom before people could lift themselves from their established, habitual, customary frame of mind and methods of thinking, conceiving and feeling. To him, they could only succeed by reverting to what it was at the beginning, before their minds and their hearts had been corrupted by "civilization", by once again following the ways of Nature. In thus reverting to his origins, man can rebuild and restructure his life. Thus both Life and Nature can and should be reunited in the Tao, according to ChuangtTse. Whether he will in fact do so, is a matter of man's considered choice.  To ChunagTse, the cause of the senseless massacres of the innocent of his age was is merely the symptom of a more fundamental disease: the greed for wealth, for power and for reputation enshrined in a civilization which encouraged such human ambition but which failed to provide them with a means of moderating the same.  In such circumstances, the meaning of life has been grossly distorted: in the mindless pursuit of wealth and power of what the world considered "clever" and "smart"  social and political climbers, they gave themselves endless anxieties, fears, hatreds, angers, hesitations, frustrations, disappointments, obstinacy, contempt, addictions, delirium,  and sooner or later, they would die of exhaustion and in the process lose their own intrinsic humanity. In his "Discourse on Unification of Things (齊物論(DOUT) , ChuangTse said: " Once we are formed, we won't die until we have exhausted it; we fight or fit in with things until we are done with them, speeding like  a galloping horse which does not know how to stop. Is that not sad? We toil incessantly all our lives without success. We tire and wear out ourselves without knowing where we are going. Is that not deplorable? Men may claim that they are not yet dead. Yet is that good? Our bodies may decay, and our minds with them. We don't call that a great sorrow? Should our life be shrouded in such darkness? Is only my life shrouded in darkness and not those of others too?" ("一受其成形, 不亡以侍盡. 。與物相刃相靡，其行盡如馳, 而莫之能止，不亦悲乎。終身役役而不見其成功，恭然疲役而不知其所歸，可不哀邪!人之謂不死，奚益。其形化，其心與之然，可不謂大哀乎！人之生也，固若是芒芒乎？其我獨芒，而人亦有不芒者乎？"). To ChuangTse, all that the Confucians and the Mohists are doing is to add more shackles to the shoulders of the people, instead of relieving them of such shackles (see Easy and Loose (在宥)). It seemed to him that all the world's sorrows are shouldered by him alone, like the huge eagle in the Carefree Trip 逍遙遊 (CT). He probably felt as lonely that big bird. It seemed to him that he alone was aware of this sombre purposelessness of life's struggles. To him, there is nothing so sad as the loss of the dignity of a human being as a human being. He preferred to keep  his humanity to all the wealth and power that life could offer him. He was once asked to be the prime minister of King Wei of Leung (梁惠王) When the king's emissary sought to persuade him to join the king's service, he said he would prefer to be a tortoise wallowing in the mud than be a ritual tortoise offered gifts, honours and worhsip for a while and then be sacrificed to the gods. He would rather live with his eyes open to the reality of the Tao than be blinded by ambition for wealth, power or honour. He preferred to live a simple, frugal life in the mountains and fields and avoid politics and to shun the commonly accepted values dominating the conventional society. But to him, what is even more important is to internalize his disdain for the illusory wealth, power and honour of the conventional world because to one who has learned to do so, one could live even within the so-called "dusty world" and yet remain pure of heart and mind. 

 

The method used by ChuangTse to fortify himself against conventional worldly wisdom is his relativism, in practice through casting doubt in a lively literary form on the conventional ideas and values of the world of his time. To him, value resided in living a life of dignity like the ancients, whose life was at one with Nature. Gradually, however they wandered further and further away from Nature, introducing more and more divisions, eg. between those that they regarded as good, those they regarded as bad and by striving for more and more such ephemeral things. To ChuangTse, things, people, animals, plants, are just different manifestations of the principle of unity (萬物一體) . He said in DOUT : " Heaven, Earth, and I were born together, and all things and I are one. Since they are one, can there still be talk about them? But since they are spoken of as one, can there not be talk about them? Therefore  One is spoken of as two and two and one as three. From then on, even the most skilful enumerator will never reach the end, let alone the common folk! So from nothing,we get to something, until we get to three. If so, where would we stop if we start from something? Let us stop doing so, because that is how it is.".("天地與我共生，萬物與我為一。既已為一矣，, 且得有言乎？.既已謂一矣， 且得無言乎？一以言為二，.ニ與一為三。自始以往，考歴不能得，而况其凡乎！故自無適有以至於三，而況自有適有乎！無適焉，因是已" )(DOUT). For this reason, he thinks that we ought to cease to carving out differenes between things, men and events: differences between having something, not having something, rich and poor, famous and anonymous, high and low, big and small, right and wrong, lucky and unlucky, good and bad. To him none such pairs had any perennial value and there is little we can do about them. In Tak Chung Fu 德充符(TCF), he said  'Death and life, existence and loss, wealth and achievement, good and bad, reputation and its loss, hunger and thirst, cold and heat; such are the changes in events, the runnin of destiny. Day and night replace each other ahead of us . But we know not how they came about, If we are not up to harmonising them, we are not fit to enter the hall of the intelligent."( "死生，存亡 ，富達，賢與不肖，毁譽，飢渴，寒暑，是事之變，命之行也；日夜相代乎前，而不知能規乎其始者也。故不足以滑和，不可入於靈府"). In other words, none of us are wise enough to do that. Modern scientists would probably not agree as far as the latest example is concerned.

 

Of all the things in this world, the thing which appear to ChuangTse which has most relative value is life itself. Yet even life may not be different from death. He said in the Grand Master (大宗師) (TGM): "Life and death, it's fate. That which is regular as the night and day, it's heaven. There's something man cannot interfere with. That is how everything is."(死生，命也，其有夜生之常，天也。人之有所不得與，皆物之情也)。Yet even life may lose some of its value if it is treated as something of no intrinsic value because it might have been a dream. He said in DOUT " Formerly, Zhuang Zhou, dreamt that that he was a butterfly, a butterfly flying about, feeling that it was enjoying itself. It  did not know that it was Zhou. Suddenly Zhou awoke, and felt was he was very much Zhou again. Now it is uncertain whether it was Zhou dreaming he was the butterfly or the butterly dreaming that it was Zhou. Between Zhou and the butterly, there must be a difference. This is what is the so-called Transformation of Things." ("昔者莊周夢為胡蝶，栩栩然胡蝶，自喻適志與！俄然覺，蘧蘧然周也。 不知周之夢為胡蝶與，胡蝶之夢為周與？周與胡蝶，則必有分矣。此之謂物化") ChuangTse has learned to turn the sharp insturment of his perceptive insight upon even himself. He has learned to laugh at himself too.

 

ChuangTse's ideal is the True Man (真人). He said in the TGM :"The True men of old had no dream in their sleep, no anxiety when awake, didn't care if their food tasted good. Their breathing came deep and silently. The breathing of the true man comes and goes even to his heels while ordinary men's breathing goes only as far as their throats The True Men of old, knew nothing of the talk of birth, knew nothing of the hatred of death. They did not rejoice in life nor did they resist death. They came and went with composure. That is all. They never forgot where they came from (nothingness) and would not inquire into where they would be going to. They rejoiced in what they were given and remembered what they forgot. That is why it is said that they did not resist the Dao with their mind and they did not try to interfere with the way of heaven with human effort. " ("古之真人，其寢不夢，其覺無憂，其食不甘，其息深深。真人之息以踵，眾人之息以喉。...古之真人，.不知說生，不知惡死，其出不訢 ，其入不距 ，翛然而往，翛然而來而已矣. 不忘其所始，不求其所終；受而喜之，忘而復之，是之謂不以心揖道，不以人助天"). In short, they just live and let live and accept whatever is offered to them gladly and would not hanker for them if they do not get what they subjectively desire. One thing is as good or as bad as another. They just let Nature, life, destiny, fate, chance, take their natural course with composure. They live in peace with everything and every one and especially with Nature. As part of living in accordance with the principles of nature, it also appears that the True man practices deep breathing or what has been called Chi Kung (氣功).

 

Another value he treasured from Nature is its beauty. In a way, trying to perceive the beauty of Nature is a way of following the principles of Nature, just like the practice of Chi Kung and of transcending the mundane life of the ordinary folks. To him, it is only through contemplating the beauty of Nature that one discovers one of the deepest secrets of Nature.To him, Nature is not separate from man because even man himself is a part of Nature and Nature itself as a kind of nobility of character which the wise man ought to imitate.To him, Nature is not just a place of refuge, it is even more a place where man can find his salvation. To him, to follow the lead of Nature is to follow the path of "Don't do anything/Don't interfere"(無為). Through LaoTse, he learned that to do nothing amounts in practice  to imitate what Nature is doing. Although Nature says nothing, does nothing, it continues to run the world in endless cycles and it is from its operation of  such circles that everything which grows here on earth. To him, nothing is not really nothing but has a potential for everything. It is in the beauty of the world that we realize the unity of man to the world and of the unity between different peoples. Focusing on the beauty of Nature is a way of directing our mind away from the incessant visible activities of life and focusing it on the realm of the invisible and towards grasping the true meaning of the Tao, a way of transcending material life and entering into the realm of the life of the spirit, towards a merging of the visible and the invisible, the material and the spiritual, the body and the ¨soul¨.To him it is a way of reaching the ideal of ¨riding on the positive energy of heaven and earth and mastering the conflict of the 6 chi to roam in infinity¨ ¨( 乘天地之正，而卸六氣之辯, 以遊無窮者( CT)), the land of boundless mystery. What is beautiful for ChuangTse is not only the beauty of form one finds in Nature but their ability to inspire us to appreciate an even more magical, more fascinating beauty of the mystery of Infinity, in which all apparent contradictons find their final home andthe ultimate resolution., its capacity for changing forms without losing its fundamental simplicity and unity. It is a profound beauty of Nature and of the Tao.

 

To ChuangTse, civilization has denuded and robbed us of that ability to appreciate the simple beauty of Nature and thrown us into an artificial world of burning desires, ambition, hypocrisies and bad faith. He wants to restore to us that beauty of the Tao he finds in life and in Nature and before human civilization has introduced into our mind the concept of ¨difference¨and ¨division¨and ¨discrimination¨ and the contradiction between man and Nature. That is why ChuangTse urges us to forget about the rites and the music (忘禮樂) and advises us to practice of mental or spiritual abstinence (心齋) by restraining and controlling or even better by reducing desires to the minimum level if they cannot be totally avoided by creating such physical and emotional environment that natural human desires will be unlikely to arise e.g. by a process called "sitting forgetfulness" (坐忘) or meditation which he explains  to Ngan Wui by saying that it meant ¨relaxing the body and the limbs, stop being clever, get away from form and abandon using the mind and seek to identity with the great connection (the Tao)( 墮肢體，黜聰明，離形去知，同於大通 )(TGM). In the silence of the meditation, we see everything, we hear everything. He said in Heaven and Earth (天地篇)¨Look at the void. Listen to silence. In the Void, , you will see all alone that clarity. In the silence, you will hear all alone the harmony. You have to plumb deeper and deeper before you will reach anything. You have to spiritualize more and more before you can grasp the essence¨ (¨¨ 視乎冥冥，聽乎無聲。冥冥之中 ，獨見曉然，無聲之中，狂獨聞和焉。深之又深而能焉，神之又神而能精焉¨).