The Tao of LaoTse. 3

I have dealt with origin and the nature of the Tao in LaoTse and what may be termed its manifestation generally in the two previous blogs. In this one, I shall try to find out what LaoTse has found out about the the operation of the principle of the Tao in more specific situations. We must never forget that during the Epoque of the Spring and Autumn (春秋), China was plinged into great chaos, with one regional power fighting another. It was a period in which the politcal frontiers and boundaries and the political control of the various territories or spheres of influence of the 7 so-called "nations" were constantly shifting, and when the scholar-philosophoher-thinkers were trying to solve the attendant problems . The problems they were trying to solve were not just problems of academic debates about the relative merits of individual schools of thought, or the subtle points of philosophic language, although there was that as well ( e.g the nominalist 名家), but also the bigger problems of how to restore order to chaos and how to bring about a reduction of the confusion following the disintegration  Chou dynasty (周朝) and more generally, the problem of the unification of the China. LaoTse was one only of such scholar-philosopher-thinkers, albeit it he appeared to have analyzed the problem of chaos to its deepest level: to the principles of the origin of the universe and the regularities of its operation. Having found what he thought of as the causes of the problem of chaos, he has also made various suggestions of how certain conventional problems of social and political chaos might be solved or resolved. 

 

One of the principles of the operation of the Tao LaoTse found was the principle of the eternal return to the source (歸根) or alternatively the principle of restoration to destiny/fate (復命). This principle has been called by the Swiss founder of analytical psychology, Karl Gustav Jung which he applied to the problem of the human psyche, the study of mythology, religion, art and culture, by the name "the principle of antionomy". Friedrich Nietzsche has called it the principle of the eternal return/recurrence. LaoTse says in Cap 16 of the TTC : "Reach to the utmost point of the Void/Emptiness/Nothingness. Keep to the Ultimate Silence. Everything acts/grows  at the same time. (But) I observe their return. There appears to be many many things.  (But) Everything returns to its root/source/origin. We call such return to its root/source/origin "silence". That may be terrmed "return to its destiny/fate" . To return/revert to its destiny/fate is regular/law-like. To know what is regular/law-like may be described as "enlightened/clarity". Not to know what is regular/law-like and act with ignorance is dangerous. If you know what is regular/law-like, you can be tolerant/indulgent. If you are tolerant/indulgent, you can be just. If you are just, you can be whole. If you are whole, you can be heavenly. To be heavenly is to follow the Tao. If you follow the Tao, you can have permanence/stability. Then can you live through life without danger." (致虛極，守靜篤。萬物並作，吾以觀復。夫物芸芸，各復歸其根。歸根曰靜，是謂復命，復命曰常。知常曰明，不知常，妄作凶。知常容，容乃公，公乃全，全乃天 ，天乃道，道乃久。沒身不殆。).  

 

This idea of the principle of operation of the Tao as the eternal return is repeated again in Cap 25 of the TTC where he says " Soundless and Formless/Shapeles. Indepedent and unchanging. Running in cycles and without delay...I'll reluctantly call it "great". Great is like flowing forever. Flowing forever means flowing to the furthest limits. At its limits, it returns. Therefore the Tao is great, The heaven is great. The Earth is great. Man too is great.". (寂兮寥兮，獨立而不改，周行而不殆...强之名曰大，大曰逝，逝曰遠，遠曰反。故道大，天大，地大，人亦大). Infofar as man learns from the earth, the earth learns from heaven, and heaven follows the Tao, the Tao follows Nature, all may be equally great. But what is peculiar is the idea of the return, the reversion, the regression, the rebound, the recoil, the reversal, the recurrrence, the reappearance, the repair, the replacement, the reinstatement, the restoration, the re-establishment, the revvial, the rejoining, the home-coming or even the the retort, the revenge, revolt, or revolution when one has gone to the furthest limits in one direction. In short, it is the idea of the circle or the cycle and re-cycling and the mutual interaction of causes and effects which may at the limit turn into its very opposite. Therefore two similar but slightly different ideas are involved in the idea of the "return". one in space and in linear terms ( the law of antionomy, the reversal of the poles into its opposite like the swining of the pendulum) , the other in time ( the progression of events from one phase to another with the end of one phase shading impercibly into the beginning of another phase until at the last phase looks remarkably like the first, and the end looks remarkably like its beginning.) 

 

We see the operation of this eternal return in everything around us. We come from nothing, we grow, we develop into maturity, we grow weaker, we die and then return to nothingness but in the meantime, whilst we are still alive, we  create other lives; we set into motion other processes, which in turn create other lives or set into motion still other processes and so on and so on ad infinitum. Scientists have now taught us how we recycle energy: we eat ( ie. we obtain from outside of our bodies materials we need) we digest, we break down what we eat into its constituent chemicals or chemical compounds, we resynthesize them into forms we can use, we brun them, we reject what we do not need for our normal functioning in the form of urine, faeces, sweat etc. There are all kinds of cycles, the growth cycle, reproductive cycle,  the sleep cycle, the oxygen/carbon dioxide cycle and even disease cycles (etiology). Everywhere we are, whenever we may be, we see the operation cycles and cycles and cycles. That is what LaoTse observed.

 

LaoTse has found the secret of life, of growth, of decay and of death! Such cycles operate not only in the human world. They operate equally in the physical world of inorganic things and matter too . Thus we have cycles of wind (cyclones, anti-cyclones); cycles of water first of ice ( snow, ice, glaciers), then water (:rain, rivers, streams, lakes, pools, seas) and steam (water vapor, mist, clouds) where water changes its form in accrodance with its temperature. We have the movement of the heavenly bodies and of the earth (the self-revolution of the earth along its axis giving us our day and night and its circling around the sun in its orbit along its slanted axis thus giving us more or less exposure to the heat of the sun, which translates into our springs summers autumns and winters). Newton has found the principle of gravity and the relationship of gravity to the laws of motion of the planets and the stars and Einstein has refined Newton's laws of motion into the general and special theory of relativity. Thus everywhere we look around us, we find the operation of different physical laws and we see the constant cycles of transformation of energy from the smallest to the largest bodies in the universe. Electricty and magneticism may in suitable conditions transform into mechanical, sonic and light energies and mass may also be transformed into energies and vice versa. The previously separate laws of magnetism and electricity are now combined into the laws of electro-magnetism which operate by force fields whose energy diminishes by its distance from the nucleus or centre of the positive charge/energy. And some scientists are working furiously to try to work out what has been called the ultimate theory: the theory of everything (TOE). So far, they have not been successful but there are many tentative theories like the M-theory which I blogged about and which purports to explain the laws of motion of the  biggest (the galaxies, the universe or now universes)  as well as the smallest forces in the universe ( the myriad quantum wave/particles like neutrinos, electron, positrons etc more than a hundred of them) through the principles of mathematics. Scientists tell us that electrons also move in orbits, just like the planetary systems!  In addition, they tell us that at the quantum level, "nothing" may really not be nothing and that the void is not really empty but may be seething with activities at infinitely small energy levels  and that somehow, in ways we do not know precisely, under Heisenberg's principle of indeterminacy or uncertainty, we can only learn about the overall results of the force/momentum or the position of the relevant waves/particles (whose motions operate or can be calculated only on principles of probabilities ) but not both their force and position at the same time and place and at that level, something may actually come from what appears to be "nothing". This is the ultimate example of the operation of the principle of reversal or opposites or cycles: it operates at the level of being and nothingness !!!   Curiously, this has been discovered by LaoTse intuitively but not scientifically, more than 2000 years ago. He says in Cap. 40 TTC: "Re-cylcing/reversal is the mode of Tao's motion...Heaven and Earth (Everything) comes from being. Being comes from Nothingness". (反者道之動...天下生於有，有生於無).

 

 

We have the growth cycle of the plants which depend upon the rhythmic diurnal cycles of day and night and the changing seasons and then the growth cycle of the animals which feed on the plants and then those who feed on the other animals which in turn depend on the plants etc Every living thing, from the biggest to the smallest, like single cell plants or animals which sometimes group themsleves into bigger or smaller communities for ease of obtaining more food or for protection against death and destruction by other plants or animals. etc follow cycles. Social scientist now tell us that there are also analogous cycles of growth, development and decay like trade cycle, financial cycle, economic cycles etc. And I don't need to mention fashions in women's and men's clothes. Even in the academies, there are fashions and fads in physics, biology, psychology, medicine, in economics, cultural studies, religious studies and even in philosophy. And finally, we have the principles of ecology, which study the complex interacting relationship between water, air, minerals, sunlight and lifeforms on the earth giving rise to James Lovelock's Gaia hypothesis which posit the inter-connectedness of everything living and non-living on planet earth! The planet earth may in many ways act "as if" it were a giant organism: something endowed with life: with information, with feed-back loops, with what appears remarkably like "intention" or "purpose": the maintenance of Life!