The Tao of LaoTse. 2

In the previous blog, I set out what LaoTse tried to explain about the nature of the Tao. In that explanation, LaoTse described the Tao as by the double adjective "恍" and "惚" . In Chinese these two words are now often used together as a compound expression such that the first ajdective of that compound expression is seldom used without the other. What do we mean by that inseparable pair of words "恍惚" ? LaoTse gave another explanation or illustration in chapter 14 of the TTC. He said: " To look but not see may be termed Yi (夷). To listen but not hear may be called Shi(希). To strive for but not attain may be called Mi (微). All three can never be fully explained. That is why they are jumbled together as one. It is not bright above, nor dark below. It is boundless/limitless/infinite and cannot be named. It always returns/regresses to non-substance/non-matter/nothing. That is to say, it is a shapeless form, a thing/substance-less phenomenon/image/picture. That is 恍惚. You see not its head in front, nor its back from behind. If you stick to this ancient Tao, you may dominate all that is present. To be able to know its ancient/eternal origin is to know the law of the Tao.". (視之不見名曰夷，聽之不聞名曰希，博之不得名曰微，此三者不可致詰，故混而為一。其上不曒，其下不昧，繩繩不可名，復歸於無物。是無狀之狀，無物之象，是謂恍惚。迎之不見其首，隨之不見其後。執古之道，以卸今之有。能知古始，是謂道紀). From this suggestion, not "definition" of the nature of the Tao, we get an inkling of what the Tao may be: neither bright nor dark, invisble, inaudible, unattainable, strictly speaking, unexplainable, formless, imageless and you can make neither head nor tail of it. But it always returns or regress unto itself and unto nothingness or emptiness or the Void. Yet if we understand a little bit more of the nature of this ancient or eternal truth, we may then know how it works in practice and hence be able to work with it or to work within it a little better here and now.  It is governed by its own laws, its own principles.

 

From this Tao, this nothingness, this emptiness, this Void comes everything: time, space, matter, objects, life, form, qualities and laws. What is the effect  or function of the Tao on this world of ours? What does the Tao do? How does it affect us and other forms of life? The Tao shapes, nourishes everything in the universe. Laotse said in Cap 34 of the TTC " The Grand Tao floods everything, shapes and influences everything. Everything relies upon it for its birth and not upon itself for such birth but it assist everything to reach its goal but will not hold/own them.  It clothes and nourishes everything but will not act as its master. Because it never desires anything, it may be termed humble; because everything returns to it and it masters them not, it may be termed great. Because it aims not to be great itself, it makes greatness.". (大道氾兮，其可左右。萬物持之而生而不辭，功成而不有，衣養萬物而不為主。常無欲，可名於小；萬物歸焉而不為主，可名為大。以其終不自為大，故能成其大。)From this, we know that although the Tao is the origin of everything but never seeks to dominate whatever it creates, whatever it develops, whatever it nourishes, whatever it helps to grow for the latter's own purposes and in its own ways, it may paradoxically be described as both humble and great. It is humble because it always hides itself behind the others. But because it assists the others to achieve greatness, it is vicariously great..  And because it always merely influences but never asserts itself, it helps the others to be great. Thus the Tao is the world's greatest mother, the greatest mid-wife, the greatest facilitator, the greatest helper, the greatest servant and not its master. 

 

The Tao (道) expresses and manifests itself concretely as Te (德)  or if we use Buddhist or Hindu terminology , the karma (業) . If we continue to use such terminology, then we may compare the Tao of LaoTse to the Brahman of Hinduism. In Chapter 51 of the TTC , LaoTse explains the relationship between the Tao and the Te: "The Tao starts/gives birth to everything, Te husbands it. Things gives it form. Circumstances shape it. That is why everything respects the Tao and values the Te. The reason why the Tao is respected and the Tao is valued is that the Tao never masters and always  allows the others to follow its own purposes and ways naturally...It gives birth but never owns them. It acts but never holds on to them. It rears but but never kills. This is the highest Te. " (道生之，德畜之，物形之，勢成之。是以萬物莫不尊道而貴德。道之尊，德之貴，夫莫之命而常自然...生而不有，為而不持，長而不宰。是為玄德) . To Laotse, therefore, the Tao is positive, never negative as far as the others are concerned. But as for itself, it is always negative in the sense that it never asserts itself by force. If it acts, it acts behind the scene, gently, subtly, softly, silently, inconspicuously and invisbly. That to LoaTse, is its greatest virtue (德). He uses the term 玄 to describe the Te of the Tao. That word in Chinese has the connotations of big, great, spacious, noble and mysterious. In chapter 65, LaoTse further elaborates what he means by 玄德. He says there: " To know/understand always the steps and method may be termed Great Virtue. Great  How profound and how far is that Great Virute. How everything must return to its source before we may have that great smoothness/flow?". (常知稽/楷式，是為玄德。玄德深矣遠矣; 與物反矣, 然後乃至大順。). Thus again, LaoTse always emphasizes the need to return to the original principle of the Tao. We must never for a moment forget that origin, to which we must return again and again and always keep that in mind.

 

Finally, what is the relationship between the Man, Tao( 道) and Nature (自然) according to LaoTse?  He says in Chapter 25 of the TTC: " Man models himself on the Earth. The Earth models itself on Heaven. The Heaven models itself on the Tao. The Tao models itself on Nature" (人法地. 地法天，天法道，道法自然) . Thus we may say that to LaoTse, the ultimate model is Nature. That is why in a sense, we may say that all Taoists are Naturalists!

The Tao of LaoTse

Having studied ChuangTse, there is no reason why I should not also give some attention to that wisest and to some extent the most enigmatic of all Chinese philosophers, Laotse. Let's find out what he has to say about that greatest problem which faces all Taoists: the problem of what we mean by Tao? What is the Tao that underlies all of reality? How does it manifest itself to man? What is it telling us? How can we find out more about it?  What can we learn from having a better understanding of the Tao? There is no better way than to get it from the horse's mouth! Let's hear what Laotse is said to have said, in the only suriviving text attributed to that librarian of the Chor Kingdom the Tao Te Ching (道德經 (TTC), that elder of Confucius whom the latter purportedly once consulted, more than 2000 years ago.

 

First of all, Laotse thought that the Tao is the principle of creation of the universe and all that is within it. The Tao is the ulitmate source and origin of the universe. It is the be all and end all of everything that there is, the alpha and the omega of all and everything and in many ways, the equivalent of the Western idea of God or of the Being of Heidegger or Reality (although obviously how that should be conceived or viewed is an entirely different matter). Laotse thinks that the Tao emerged from chaos and existed before the existencce of the universe, independently, and operates continuously in cycles. He says: "Something existed in a chaos, before the the birth of the universe. It runs by itself unalterably and goes around endlessly in cycles. We may consider it the mother of the universe. I don't know its name. I'll just call it Tao. " (TTC 25). (有物混成，先天地生。獨立而不改。周行而不殆，可以為天下母。吾在知其名，字之曰道。)

 

After the Tao created itself, it started to create other things and matter. It did so through the principle of of unity, the principle of One.  He says: " The Tao gives birth to One. One gives birth to two. Two give birth to three. Three give birth to everything. (TTC 42) Cap 42) (道生一，一生二，二生三，三生萬物). Therefore in the beginning there was one undivided, undifferentiated, inchoate mass. Then through it own operative principle, that initial mass began to divide and split into two, one postive and one negative and each complementing the other, rather like the cell division of afertilized egg cell which will eventually further divide until it becomes a human embryo or an embryo of other complex living things. Of course, at the time he wrote LaoTse knew nothing of the development of the human embryo and matters of fertilization of the female egg by the male sperm. But the idea is roughly similar. Laotse's way of saying the further growth and multiciplication is that it proceeded through division, but such growth and multiplication happened in arithmetic, not geometrical pogression. This is again, a matter of details, not of principle.

 

There are a lot of debates by scholars as to whether the Tao is a substance or just an abstract principle. Let's see what Laotse has to say. He says: "As something (object, matter), it's unstable, confused, moving. Within such instability, confusion and motion, there are phenomenan/images/pictures; Within such instability, confusion and motion, there are matters/objects; within its highest/furthest limits and its obscurity, there is essence. Its essence is so real/true and within that there is honesty/faith/truth". (TTC 21) (道之為物，惟恍唯惚。恍兮惚兮，其中有象；恍兮惚兮，其中有物；窈兮冥兮，其中有精。其精甚真，其中有信。). However, we must take into account the context in which this description was first mentioned by Laotse. He was then talking of the appearance of Confucius.. He was saying that the picture or image of the virtue or virtuous conduct of Confucius. He said that Confucius appeared to be following the way of the Tao. In any event, it appears that several charactersitics of the Tao according to Laotse are clear: it is something which can have manifestation; it manifestation are always plagued by uncertainties, ambiguities, instabilities, lack of clarity, defintion, precision and is constanty changing in uncertain directions: there is always a certain vagueness about it and somehow within that creative chaos, we can find its essence ( the highest expression of chi 氣), some form of truth, some elements of reality and some form of honesty within it. In other words, LaoTse does not think it proper to define it too clearly, probably because as he said earlier, it is not something which is nameable precisely. Especially with regard to the idea of honesty, Laotse seems to be suggesting that somehow, the there is a moral principle involved in the Tao too. Perhaps that is because he was commenting on the moral conduct of Confucius. If so, the Tao would seem to be endowed with a "human" aspect, a moral aspect.  The Tao is something metaphysical but the conduct of man is not. It belongs to the sphere of human experience, human social reality. This seems to tie in with Laotse's idea that the Tao has two aspect, its basic, fundamental metaphysical nature (體) and its 'use" or "manifestation" or "embodiment" in particular" persons, things, events, processes  (用).

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¨).

Angela Hewitt's Bach and Mozart in Hong Kong

After the funeral shortly before the Saturday night concert at the City Hall was amost certainly a very pleasant experience. Because of the need to go through all the fomalities of the "farewell" bows, the subsequent condolences and the time it took for me to find the MTR station in the unfamiliar environment of Taikoktsui, when I arrived at the City Hall, the concert had already started. So I had to stand at the back. From there, I saw the profile of a lady who looked amazingly like a female version of Prince Charles of Wales, in a tricolor gauze-like dress of red, purple and black, sitting in front of the grand piano, playing away in the decorous and measured counterpuntal rhythms of a Bach "keyboard" concerto. The form belonged to the long awaited Canadian born pianist Angela Hewitt.  She played well. She conveyed the quiet bubbly mood of Bach's work. But somehow, I could not help saying to myself that probably that might not be the kind of sound that Bach had in mind when he wrote it. It was originally not intended for the piano. So perhaps she ought to try to imitate the sound of maybe the harpischord, with a much lighter, silvery and wispy sound. Instead, she played it in a very "romantic" way, with slightly more force on the keyboard and more frequent use of the rubato than was usual in the more controlled baroque style, thus producing rather more resonance for the notes than what I thought the music justified. Angela Hewitt is not the first to play baroque pieces with a "romantic" tinge. She is in good company. Lang Lang does it too. Sometimes I do feel sorry for artists. They got to constantly figure out ways of doing old things in new ways and for the pianists, to play a piece which has been played thousands of times before by previous artists in a way which "personalizes" the music without doing too much violence to the score and sometimes even despite such violence. Otherwise, we would probably be bored stiff listening to the same pieces being repeated endlessly in exactly the same way over and over and over again! Anyway, she got tremendous applauses for this Keyboard Concerto in G minor. It was well deserved.

 

Her next piece was Mozart's Piano Concerto No. 27 in B flat. This was one of the most popular of Mozart's piano concertos and came at the end of a long line of the same. As in most of Mozart's works, there is that perpetual delight in the joy of living. It was a very lyrical chamber work for the flute, two oboes, two bassoons, two horns and strings, lasting roughly half an hour. There was a simplicity and a directness which came straight from Mozart's mercurial heart and mind, and an undiluted delight in coming up with good melody and the sheer fun of playing around with music notes  which I like very much in Mozart's music.  Angela Hewitt was able to convey that too. But again, somehow I wished that she would have played with a slightly lighter touch to convey the kind of uninterrupted "flow: and the "sparkle" which I think is the hallmark of Mozart's music and which lingering on the sonic qualities of individual notes would destroy. If it were slightly briskier, slightly more flowing, slightly brighter, with slightly more "shine", it would have been perfect. Of course, it is not true that life is always joy and delight, even for a Mozart. There might be moments of sorrow foo, when a slower tempo and darker sound would be more appropriate. I certainly do not have any training in music and wouldn't know whether Angela Hewitt did it right.  But I cannot help feeling what I felt. I told my friend how I felt during the intermission. He too agreed with me. However,  as it is, it is already very very good and I had little to complain about.

 

In the second half of the concert, Angela Hewitt played Bach's Keyboard Concerto in F Minor and the Mozart's Piano Concerto No. 20 in D minor. My friends told me that for some reason ,  she announced at the start of the concert that she had decided that it might be better to switch the two scheduled Bach pieces around. I do not know whether or not it was because having heard her play one Bach and one Mozart in the first half of the concer, my ears had thus grown accustomed to her sound. I found in fact that the two pieces she played in the latter part of the concert to be much better than those in the first. Perhaps she might have completely warmed up by then. Whatever the true cause might have been, I like her encore very much when she played alone and could fully concentrate on what she was doing.  Perhaps having to conduct from her piano seat might have distracted her concentration in her earlier performances.

 

When I flipped through the programme notes, I discovered that Angela Hewitt began learning the piano at age 3, also studied the violin, recorder and ballet, gave her first piano recital at 9, and had since gone on to win a number of important international awards and won many honours from music magazines and also the BBC Listener's Award and had played Bach's Well-Tempered Klavier in some 30 major cities around the globe between 2007 and 2008 and has held an annual Trasimeno Music Festival on the shores of Lake Trasimeno in Malta since 2005. Certainly a very energetic and talented musician.

 

Wow.  Just discovered Angela Hewitt's red hot impressions of Hong Kong and on the players of the HKPO,  published on 29.04.10 . She may be accessed at http://www.angelahewitt.com. I hope she does not mind my copying and pasting. Here it is:

 

We just had a spectacular downpour in Hong Kong. It perhaps wasn’t the best decision to take the ferry from Kowloon (where I have been rehearsing all day with the Hong Kong Philharmonic in a rehearsal hall in the Cultural Centre) back to Hong Kong Central. There were no taxis when I got there, and I got soaked waiting for one. But it’s so much nicer to get on the boat rather than get stuck in the terrible traffic in the tunnel. I took the photo of the very grey skies during a quick lunch break when I went out to get some air—such as it is here. Hong Kong is endlessly fascinating—but also a bit hellish. I can only imagine what it would be like in extreme heat, and am glad this is April and not July. But don’t get me wrong: I’m enjoying it a lot. It was great to have three days just to practise in a small studio (which I shared with 10 timpani, a marimba, and a harp) and have some time to myself to catch up on some writing projects that have imminent deadlines. I also went to a dress designer I know and got three new concert gowns which I need if I am not to be seen wearing the same thing time in and time out! Plus I did some TV and radio interviews. The guy hosting the TV one told me his name was Ben Pelletier…I said that was very Canadian-sounding, to which he replied that Wilfrid Pelletier (the conductor after whom the hall where the Montreal Symphony plays is named) was his great-grandfather. Small world! In the orchestra most of the string players are Asian, but the excellent wind players come from France, England, and I don’t know where else. We had fun (at least I did, I hope they did, too!) working on four piano concertos in one day—2 Bach, 2 Mozart. They hardly ever play that repertoire, and at first I thought it was going to be hard going, but very quickly they caught on, and by the end of the day I felt they were really listening beautifully and responding accordingly. The concerts I am told are sold out already. Everybody wants to get their money’s worth and hear four concertos at once! Now I must cook my dinner (I have a small kitchen and found a supermarket around the corner that has everything you could ever want—typical of Hong Kong), go and pick up my new dresses (if the rain has stopped), and continue writing some CD notes.

 

The Modernization of China

Since 1963, Zhou EnLai has called for Chinese professionals to help China realize what has been called the Four Modernizations viz. that in agriculture, industry, national defence and science and technology. Some 15 years later, in December, 1978 Deng Xiaoping was finally able to enshrine that into a government policy at the 3rd Plemum of the 11th Central Committee. The aim of the  Four Modernizations was to realize that dream which has eluded China since the 19th Century and hopefully to turn China into a great economic power by early 21st century. The way forward was thought to be through the introduction of foreign trade and investment, the implementation of controlled market economy in the form of a kind of mixed economy dominated by certain state-controlled and initially subsidised industries considered to be strategic like communications, telecommunications, heavy industries, huge building programs, currency reform and the importation of of advanced technologies and management skills from the West and the concomittant reform of the institutions of higher learning and a corresponding relaxation of the strict control of the flow of ideas and the gradual replacement of purely adminstrative measures by the legitimation of government policies through rule by law (note: not rule of law). But the tiger's butt which cannot be touched is the rigid control of the state legislature, the judiciary and the military apparatus. The results of the implementation of such a policy can now be seen through the Expo in Shanghai this year  and the staging of the Olympics in Beijing last year. Yet conspicuously absent in the four modernizations is the modernization China's political structure, which remains staunchly and stubbornly under the rigid control the CCP. China's doors were first opened in 1839 when Captain Elliot used British battleships to force China to import opium and to export tea and silk. In about 1845, Commodore Perry of America opened the door of Tokugawa Japan. Since then the fates of Japan and China had been very very different. Japan rapidly modernized by establishing factories, trade, a modern system of education, government and armies and navies and after some 30 years was able to win a war against imperial China in 1894 over the control of the Korean peninsula  and about a decade later defeated the Russians over the control of Manchuria in north eastern China in the Russo-Japanese war of 1905. China however tottered along, remaining weak and divided and had to give extraterrorial rights to England, France, Germany, Italy, Russia, Japan etc which had the right to control customs taken over by 8 European nations following the defeat of the so-called Boxer Uprising in 1900. The success of the 1911 Nationalist Revolution did not substantially improve China's ability to modernise itself. Why? Why did it take nearly more than a century and a half before China can take serious steps to get its modernization into full swing? The causes are complex. So I looked up an article by Hung in his book The Cultural Moment of Philosophy I mentioned in an earlier blog. There he introduced a study edited by Gilbert  Rozman and Thomas P Bernstein both of  Princeton University and which appeared in 1981 on "The Modernaization of China". Four of contributing  authors of that book had also done a similar study on the modernization of Russia and Japan.

The authors of the book studied the earlier failure of the modernization in China by concentrating on three different stages of its history: 1. the pre-modernization condition. 2 the transition from traditional society to a modern society which in Japan lasted from the mid-17th Century to the period of the Meiji Restoration in the 1860s and in China, according to Hung,  lasted from 1905 to the end of 1990s and 3. the advanced stage of modernization which China has just begun. They studied China's earlier modernization from 5 perspectives: international environment, political structure, economic growth and structure and growth, social integration and education. To the authors, for modernization to be successful, a country must have the guts to accept new ideas, the energetic leadership of a strong central government, with strong support by the elites of various sectors of soceity , the effective mobilization of all the resources of the government for  technological and industrial development and corresponding changes in the economic structures, opportunites for upward social mobility and finally widespread educational reforms. 

As far as China is concerned, when the Western merchants and battleships arrived at the shores of southern China in the 19th century, it was not the first time that China had to think of ways of dealing with such foreign intrusion. China had already been been introduced to foreign thoughts on how life should be run in the Tsui and Tang dynasties when Buddhist thoughts entered China through India and for a second time in the 8th and 9th centuries, when Islam entered China and then again in the 15th and 16th centuries, when Christianity entered China. But in all such cases, such introductions were peaceful and their influences had to a greater and lesser extent all been sinicized and absorbed into Chinese culture. Even when there had been military invasions of China by Mongolia from the west  and Manchuria from its north east,  once such foreign races entered China, for the sake of maintaining political stability, such foregn races had to adapt to Chinese civilization and so there had not been any serious disturbance of Chinese culture as a whole. Perhaps it was precisely the success China encountered in its response to foreign culture and invasion in the past that now became an impediment to China's modernization. It was this success which explains its reluctance to engage in the kind of radical change in all sectors of Chinese society required by modernization when China faced the West in the 19th century. Its previous success fostered the illusion that China did not need to radically alter its ways and would still be able to successfuly accomodate such new ideas and new foreign powers. But this time the Chinese political leaders could not have made a more serious misjudgement. They did not realize until too late that the Western challenge this time was different in kind from all the previous.challenges. They misjudged the importance and the seriousness of the naval, political and cultural threat in southern China and concentrated its defence in the north: it was still trying to expand westward into Tibet, Sinkiang and Mongolia. It was therefore a shock that China was defeated in the so-called Opium War after which the Treaty of Nanking was signed in 1841. That was when Hong Kong was "ceded in perpetuity" and the northern tip of the Kowloon peninsula was "leased" to Great Britain intially for a term until 1898 . When the British ambassador tried to persuade the Imperial court to open up its ports for trade, it was met with the response that China already had everything it needed and those goods which the merchants wanted to sell to China were gadgets and trinkets which China had little need of. China thought of itself as an exporter of culture and fine products, not an importer of foreign culture and its artificats! It was thus a most serious shock to the Imperial leaders that China could be defeated by a small island state at the fringe of Europe. Nonetheless, following this slap in the face, there were some serious re-thinking which resulted in the policy of "using the barbarian to control the barbarians" and "Chinese culture as the body and Western learning for utility" which therefore culminated in some minimal efforts to modernize, confined merely to military and related technology: the training up of an army using German style weapons and system of training by Li HungCheung and shipbuilding in Fuchow but not much else. However, its enthusiasm was half-hearted because of political factors. The limited modernization of its military and shipbuilding technology was in the hands of the Han people and not in the hands the Manchus, who understandably would view such development with not a little suspicion because of its fear of the rise of regional power against those of the central government.  But according to Rozman etc. the power of the central government was decreasing during this period because whilst the population of China rose from 250 million to about 400 million during the Tsing dynasty up to mid-19th century, the number of government officials remained approximately the same, hence the ability of the central government over the provinces were not as strong as it might have liked and there was constant fear of the further rise of regional centres of power not under the control of the ruling Manchus. .

From the point of view of political structure, China certainly had the necessary central government structure required for modernization. China was the first country in the world to have a strong central government with a system of professional bureaucratic civil service whose officials were selected on the basis of their ability. We had a central government from Chin and an examination system for selection of court officials since the Han dynasty through testing their knowledge of the Confucian Chinese classsics.  Again, it was the very success of this system which paradoxically prevented China from successfully modernizing itself in mid-19th century when Japan underwent the Meiji Restoration in the face of the challenge from the West. It was not in the interest of those in power to change. Change involved new knowledge of the principles of international trade, the principles of industrial organization, the principles of modern warfare, principles of international diplomacy not possessed by those in power, something which their training in the traditional Chinese classics did not equip them for. They had no training on the need for independent thinking according to the principles of science and the rigorous use of logic and observation, free from reliance upon authority or tradition inconsistent with such empirical observation and testing of hypothesis. Nor had they any training on the principles of modern political economy. They therefore resisted for as long as possible and dragged their feet over the necessary transformation of Chinese economy and educational and social strutures.  It was against the vested interest of those who still thought that it was possible to run China along Confucian principles of a hierarchical social order, with the emperor at its apex and which had served China reasonably well for nearly 2000 years and which was more fitted to a stable agricultural economy supplemented by cottage or handicraft industry than a modern economy with emphasis on creativity, constant technological innovation, industrial manufacture for a mass market based upon such technological innovations and the vagaries of the the market forces in domestic and international trade..Their existing knowledge was geared to an inward looking stable agricultural political economy and not an open market economy subject to constant changes and where success depended on the quickness and flexibility of one's response.

Even in the 19th century, China already had a long established system of currency, a well developed system of contracts and trading routes within the country,which to some extent were the pre-requsites of rapid modernization required by a modern capitalist market economy. China also had other elements required for the development of a market economy ie. land and labor in abundance. It also had private entrepreneurial capital but such capital was not under the effective control of the imperial government. The Tsing Emperors had decided long ago that for the sake of promoting prosperity of the people, it would never raise taxes! Hence the ability of the Government to garner sufficient capital for a government directed effort at promoting industrial development was severely hampered. This is in stark contrast to the situation in Meiji Japan, where Mitsui and the other saibatsus were actively encouraged by the Government. The net result of this government policy was that whilst population rose dramatically, agricultural and industrial production did not rise correspondingly. All industrial productions were confined to a few port cities in southern, central and northern China forced to be open to trade by treaty. There was thus huge differences between the port cities and the greater part of Chinese cities in the interior of China. The Government was simply unable to effectively intervene in the economy as a matter of policy to actively promote the modernization of its manufacture. Industries in the greater part of Chinese cities remained at the cottage industry level so that they could not promote the type of rapid urbanization through the establishment of mass production factories which would in turn contribute to the generation of demand by the rising population concentration favourable to the further development of market economy. These factors were not favourable to the rapid accumulation of capital by the Government required for a directed modernizaion effort, nor the growth of the relevant market to fuel such rapid industrialization, conditions which existed in Russia at the time of Peter the Great and Meiji Japan..

It is interesting to note that Rozman's analysis differ very substantially from the traditional analysis of the causes for the failure of China to modernize its economy in the 19th and early 20th centuries which  emphasized the political and ideological factors in terms of differences of values and the unfair treatment which China got from the Western powers through the activities of Western  capitalists and merchants actively assisted by their imperialistic governments. After the "success" of the Communist revolution, explanations took a Marxist turn according to which Confucianism was an impediment to modernization because it was the ideology of a petty bourgeois class suitable to a feudal agricultural economy but that its pernicious influences continued to plague China long after it had served its historical purpose. Rozman's  analysis certainly is less ideologically motivated and seems much more balanced. It is certainly arguable whether or not all the points of their analysis are right and whether they have or have not made errors on individual points but there can be little doubt that modernization is an extremely complex process involving all kinds of radical changes through all sectors of Chinese society. For that reason, we can be pretty sure that no single interpretation can be expected to have covered all the relevant factors.