Chinese Philosophy - Tumblr Posts
Defining the Dao (for Right-Brained People)
A while back I posted my attempts to explain the Dao in a manner that would be helpful for those who are more logically-inclined. I feel like the world has become more left-brained in recent years, what with the popularity of the internet and the ease of sharing information around the world and such. This isn’t a bad thing, simply an observation. But since I’m not solely left-brained (like everyone else in the world), I thought it would be good to post a follow-up for more intuitively-minded folks. This is actually much easier, since it allows me to post my thoughts in fuzzy vagaries, using the meandering analogies I’ve thought up over the years.
So what is the Dao then? In my previous post, I talked about how it’s a lot like gravity: always around us, encouraging us to take the path of least resistance down the mountain. This is a somewhat simple analogy to understand, but I feel that it implies that following the Path requires no effort, no input or agency from us in our lives. We still need to actually walk down the mountain, as opposed to simply falling over on the side of the road and laying there until the end of eternity.
It might be beneficial to think of the Dao as sort of like the rhythm of the Universe, a constant beat resonating through our lives to keep us on the same page as everything else. But it’s not like a marching band’s rhythm, where there is a single conductor and everyone is moving in lockstep with everyone in pursuit of some grander design (perhaps this would be a monotheistic interpretation of the Dao?). Rather, I think of it more like a big music jam session that we’re all apart of at the same time. There’s a single rhythm filling the room that we’re all in on, one that we’re all playing to completely by feel and improvisation. Some people are out of sorts with the group, whether because they haven’t caught the beat yet or because they don’t want to play along with everybody else. But for the people all playing together in harmony, truly wonderful and beautiful music can be made. Some folks will play louder, some softer, some will play out grand and intricate solos, and some will just be keeping a steady accompaniment.
The most important thing to remember is that it works best if we’re all playing with each other instead of against each other.
Daoism as Religion
I am not a religious person. I do not consider myself spiritual. To be honest, I’m not sure I consider myself to be particularly faithful (in the religious/spiritual sense, I’m not a cheater!). Is this against Daoism?
I don’t believe so. True Daoism isn’t really a religion, in any sense of the word. There are no deities, no rituals, not even really a code of conduct. It isn’t the same as Zen or Shinto or any of the other East Asian spiritual traditions that it is so commonly associated with in the modern world. Daoism is, quite simply, a guide on how to live one’s life without the stress and worry that came with the alternatives of Laozi’s age, namely Confucianism and Buddhism. Like many famous old texts, there is even debate on whether the old man wrote it himself, or if he existed at all (but that’s a story for another time, I think). So how did Daoism get to be associated with religion at all?
Well, here’s where things get complicated, and the issue of labeling what is and what isn’t Daoism can be problematic. Somewhere deep in China’s long and storied history, the religions of the land needed to be categorized, and Daoism, being an odd sort of duck, was lumped together with many of the shamanistic folk practices of the common people. From here we see the rise of institutionalized Daoism, with churches and rituals and all the trappings of what we would call a spiritual tradition.
But if you look at the core of the book, of the themes it encourages, this is against the very nature of the Path. It is unnecessary for the people of the world to organize groups or schools around the concepts of individual exploration, and perhaps even detrimental to the act of discovering the Path for oneself. The story goes that Laozi was hesitant to even write the book, as it creates a structure in and of itself. The conundrum is understandable, especially looking back at what’s happened over the last couple thousand years.
I believe that true Daosim, in order to focus on the core idea of letting all discover and walk their own way along the Path, should avoid this sort of idolatry. This includes venerating the old man and the book, to avoid being a Lao-ist, as it were. It’s great to have the teachings there, don’t get me wrong, but as I mentioned earlier, the authorship is under a healthy discussion as it should be, and we should look at the teachings as less a strict code, and more like guidelines, really. If there’s any sort of faith to Daoism, it would be the faith that the Path is leading us all somewhere better than where we currently are, or that everyone will eventually find their way to it and then things will be good. But that faith isn’t necessary to living your own life in accordance with your own personal Dao.
Just as a disclaimer, in no way am I saying that religion shouldn’t exist, or that the religious schools of Daoism are bad or harmful. Things turned out the way they did for a reason, this is part of the Path. Obviously, religion does a great deal of both help and harm to peoples’ lives, and this is the way I believe it is supposed to be. What I’m saying is that Daoism exists separate from wherever people choose to place their faith, and can complement or contrast with any personal spiritual belief you may have.
Bartending as Daoism
So one of my day jobs is that I work as a bartender for a nice local wine and beer lounge in the city. I had to miss last week's shift because of a meeting I had to attend, and coming back today I felt incredibly clumsy and awkward from just that little break.
But as I got back into the swing of things, I found myself floating through the bar almost instinctively. My hands knew where all the bottles were, how we were doing on snacks, how often to check on patrons, and so on. It was pretty busy for a Sunday night, but somewhere during the shift I came to the realization that bartending is a rather perfect example of Daoism in action. It requires a pretty focused mindfulness of the present moment as the bar fills up. You can't plan too far ahead and you can't focus much on past mistakes. You've got to keep your attention on the patrons you have in front of you, and making sure they're happy at that exact moment. The "now" moment is constantly there, and without proper training or perspective, it can be pretty overwhelming to deal with everything. But with the right mindset and practice, I felt like I was just able to move and flow with everyone in the bar at the same time. Making sure drinks are going there, bills are going here, glasses ready to be dried, tables to be cleaned, on and on there's always something to do. And with a sort of effortless effort (I can speak in paradoxes too!), you're able to just surrender yourself to the moment and keep the pace.
I have a feeling at least a few of you also have had this sort of experience with your own work. I think it's a mistake when people call this sort of thing "mindless," as anything that requires your hands to move or your brain to function must involve your mind being active on some level. Feel free to submit your own stories about being within the present moment at work, I'm sure we could all learn from each other's experiences.
An intriguing video about gender roles, violence, and rite of passage. Let's break it down as such, with a Daoist lens.
Being a member of modern society, the idea that men specifically have a duty to either impress others (males or females) with displays of masculinity is a bit disappointing to me. The fact that this video focuses so much on the self-imposed trials of Men not only illuminates the prevalence of this idea, but reinforces it. Are there truly no examples of female proving grounds? Or is it enough that they wed a man and bear his children? I do not believe that the Path particularly cares what sort of genitalia you possess; we all walk along it regardless of what our bodies look like.
Violence, on the other hand, is quite relevant to the Dao. It is, has been, and always will be an integral part of the human experience. We can choose to either ignore this, as the narrator (and the series as a whole) have implied, or we can recognize it and moderate it within our society. It takes place either in the form of athletic sports or violent rituals or actual combat, and there's a reason it has never left our societies. Rejecting it as a part of our identities would be as foolish as denying ourselves music or art; it is in our nature to fight. You might watch the stories presented and think the people and practices barbaric, but what defines barbarism? How does the absence of such violence in your life make you more civilized? In fact, it is more than likely that violence has simply taken a different form in your activities, making the line between civilized and barbaric essentially arbitrary.
With that said, however, the reason and cause behind violence in our lives becomes much more important. Once we accept that violence will exist as a part of our culture whether we want it or not, identifying the true nature of that violence is what allows us to create a harmonious state with it. More specifically, the idea that a group needs to express violence in order to prove themselves worthy of their peers is the most trouble I have with the episode. We are worthy enough to be ourselves, and should be judged by our own merits. None of the groups shown are in a state of war, and none are auditioning to be soldiers. Their performance in pseudo-combat is less about their actual skill and more like a quick way to discover traits about their character under duress. This is indeed useful, but a society following the Dao would need no such test, which is a second-handed way to learning one's true nature. A person's actions should be judged by how they live their normal everyday life, not by arranging circumstances around them to force them to act differently. The necessity to seek admiration and praise, to run from failure, to take oneself out of their actual reality so that they might be more than themselves in a different set of rules; these are indicative of an unstable base of persona. If we accept who we are without the need for others to approve us, then we can exist and perform as the person we choose to be.
This is not to say that the practices themselves are not beneficial to those that participate. The rigors of physical training, the tempering of combat, the satisfaction of executing a flawless gameplan or adapting to an unexpected setback; these are all incredibly useful and healthy for people to have, especially with violence being such an ingrained part of our nature. But they should be sought out and practiced by our own personal choices along the Path, not because they are needed to gain social status. If a people forge themselves to be stronger and sharper than they were before by their own choices, success and social status will follow.
Drugs and Daoism
I don’t believe there is anything inherently wrong with the use of drugs themselves, from a purely abstract perspective. In reality, there are a number of ethical, political, and physical issues with taking any mind-altering substance, depending on where it came from, how it got here, and what it can do to your body. But assuming that it’s a fair-trade product that isn’t supporting an evil empire and doesn’t have any extremely dangerous side-effects at the dosage standard, I see nothing wrong with their use. This is why I go out and have drinks every so often with friends, or why I drink coffee on an early (or late) workday. Like anything else in our lives, moderation and living well is the key to staying in line with the Dao.
But the problems start when we move out of moderation, when these substances become necessary for us to function, when we depend on a dose to keep us going. I believe that over-medication has taken a lot of people in my country off their Path, both from the established pharmaceutical industry and from the recreational drug culture. People look for something that can make them feel better without taking the time and effort needed to understand what they are trying to feel better from.
Imagine that your room has gotten quite messy, as rooms tend to do over the course of our lives. The bed is unmade, the laundry has piled up, papers and pens and old receipts have been strewn about everywhere. Things are in quite a state of disarray. However, you decide not to take the time to sort through things, to organize them and put things back in their proper place, to maybe even come up with a more efficient system of keeping things nice and neat for longer, but instead you rent a newfangled cleaning and organizing robot to pick everything up for you. It saves you a bunch of hassle, and things seem at least a little bit nicer than before. But the robot doesn’t know you and doesn’t know how you operate on a day-to-day basis, so things aren’t organized in a way that actually is easy for you to find and get access to. After all, the robot’s only parameters are to make the room clean, not convenient. And since you haven’t actually learned anything from tidying things up yourself, I would bet that the room is going to get cluttered again pretty quickly. So you rent the robot again, and again, and again; each time inevitably going back to the messiness of before, or even making things worse as you constantly fight against the robot’s way of cleaning your room.
This is what happens when you try to medicate yourself with drugs. They push us out of alignment with the Dao, and the more we use them, the more out of sync we will be. If we really want to set our messy room back in order, we need to do it ourselves. We can get help from our family and friends, even help from the occasional robot now and then, but ultimately it is something that needs to be by our own hand.
(via Dan Gilbert: The surprising science of happiness)
A scientific argument for Daoism? It's worth watching, and like most TED talks, only 20 minutes long. There are a couple things I'd like to talk about, and it's best if you watch the video first.
Essentially, the research and the data show that happiness is not only created in our own minds, but it is the same whether it is generated internally or externally. This confirms the words of both the Dalai Lama and Shakespeare, that a state of happiness is truly dependent on your individual self.
So this begs the question, what causes unhappiness? Why don't people just choose to be happy all the time? Dan Gilbert hints at this a bit, but I'll just state it outright: people are generally unhappy because the world around them has told them to be unhappy, and they believe it. When we desire things that we don't really need, when we attach ourselves to things that are fleeting, when we look out for satisfaction on the horizon instead of on our very own doorstep; these are all ways that people outside of ourselves have taken us away from the Path, and it's really up to us to get back on it. The first step, of course, is to turn away from the illusions that our lives have been saturated with.
No, growing older will not be so terrible.
No, you are not as ugly as you think.
No, you do not need to become wealthy and powerful.
These are lies that have been sold to us since the day we were born, essentially to keep society in a state of perpetual unhappiness, so that they may continue to go out and buy and put money in other peoples' pockets.
But we can see past these illusions, and we can accept reality for what it is. As the science shows, by accepting what cannot be changed, we can actually choose to be happy with what we have.
Now, this can lead to some troubling implications, I must admit. Loki, the supervillain conqueror from The Avengers, describes this quite clearly, that "Freedom is life's great lie." So if the data show that people are indeed happier without the freedom of choice, does this mean that Loki is right? That humans crave subjugation and authority?
This is the real puzzle of the Dao. Trying to strike the balance between actively following your Path and yet still yielding to its flow. In the extreme sense, one could argue that the research indicates yes, humans are sheep that must be corralled and controlled, and that we will find our greatest happiness in this state. But I see a different indication. As the video shows, we will always choose to be able to choose, as it were, even if that choice (whether we know it or not) will lead us to unhappiness. It is in our nature to accept and even create happiness in the face of uncontrollable circumstances, but it is also our nature to choose our own destiny. This is what I mean when I say we must actually walk down the mountain instead of just lying down on the side of the road. We are meant to find our own way through this world, even if that means not walking along it all the time. It's a bit tricky to explain, but I would say that people that are not walking along their true Path are doing so for a reason, that perhaps they are not on their Path so that they can find and choose it for themselves further on. You could even argue that in the grand scheme of the Universe, those who fight against their Path are actually still in line with the larger Path of the cosmos. But perhaps this is getting a bit too distant to see clearly. I would say that even if people choose Unhappiness over Happiness, it is their choice to make, and that they either will or will not choose to follow a Path to Happiness in the future (we are assuming, of course, that Daoism is meant for people to find Happiness). The most we can or should do is to choose Happiness for ourselves and see if others take note. Of those that take note, see if some ask how. Of those that ask how, see if some understand. And of those that understand, I believe that all will change their choice.
Daoism and Change
I had a lovely conversation with a dear friend of mine tonight, mostly regarding our old theater group in college and how's it's changed. I honestly think that one of the most beautiful (and frustrating) things about life is that it's always changing, every day and every moment. It's one of those things in the universe that never changes, as the saying goes. But we shouldn't fear or resist this change, no more than you should try and fight the force of gravity or the rhythm of your band (remember those analogies?). Nostalgia is one of the biggest selling points of popular culture these days, and it's not that hard to understand why. People want to feel safe, they want to remember the past without all the grimy little details that made it complicated and real. People want to embrace this illusion, but that's really all that it is.
Rather than that, I try to encourage people to embrace life both as it is and as it was. If we are going to indulge in a trip down memory lane, I believe the past deserves the respect of accuracy, not the glossed-over SFW version. Real life is always messy and nuanced, and we should never ever forget that, lest we start to gloss over the present in the same way.
But even more importantly than remembering and reliving the past accurately, we should always remember to keep the focus on the current living moment. As I stated at the beginning, the world is constantly changing all around us, and there's not a thing we can really do about it. That's why the most important thing in a Daoist's toolbox is the ability to Adapt. One needs to be willing and able to flow with the changes that happen as they happen, looking at the options as they come and finding the one most in line with your best path. This means looking past all the illusions and nostalgia our experiences have been coated with, this means opening up and seeing things as they truly are (or at least as close as you can muster). By doing this, change won't be so frightening after all.
Truth and Arrogance
No matter how the wind howls, the mountain cannot bow to it.
When I was a child, I thought this was an issue of pride, of "face" as we say in Chinese culture. That the emperor was a divine symbol of the Chinese people, that to bow in submission to a conqueror would do nothing but forfeit the soul of the kingdom to shame. Perhaps this is still partly true. After all, it's not as if other lives would be spared had the emperor chosen to humiliate himself, while much (if not all) of the respect and faith placed in him by the people would have been lost. Perhaps the emperor had already recognized that Shan Yu had returned with little more than a hunting party, not even capable of conquering a single city, much less all of China.
But there's more to it than simply putting on a strong face, I think. There's that line that's tossed around in films constantly, "We do not negotiate with terrorists." To negotiate means to recognize the other party as at least some kind of equal. And while this may or may not be true in the case of real-life issues of terrorists, in the context of Disney's Mulan I believe it's more a question of universal truths. Shan Yu, having taken the castle by storm and cornered the emperor, asks not for a display of equality, but for submission, to prove his worth as a mighty warrior and conquering lord. But what authority does the emperor recognize in Shan Yu? A powerful leader and dangerous foe, of course, but these things mean little to him. Threatening his life means little as well in the grand scheme of the universe, a truth which eludes Shan Yu to the end.
A telling reversal occurs at the finale when the emperor bows to Mulan, heroine of the day and savior of China. He bows to her before her wisdom, her tenacity, and her virtue. These are things he recognizes as worthy of his respect and humility. The mountain, it would seem, will only bow when it has something greater than itself to bow to.
Changing the Moment to Be in the Moment
or, Stepping Off the Path to See the Path or, How Habit Doesn't Equate to Harmony
Well, today marks the beginning of another semester. Even though I've been very sleepy all day from working all night, it's good to be back at school. The professor had us go through a very interesting exercise today, one that really made me stop and think for a moment. After some general warm up figure studies, he asked us all to switch gears and draw a 15 minute pose with our non-dominant hand. As you can probably imagine, we were all pretty stunned at first, and then incredibly resistant to the idea. It was awkward, it was mind-bending, and it felt more than a little foolish. But we all wanted to be professional and see the task done.
After the pose finished, we took a break from drawing and he had everyone do a quick walk around the room to see the work of our classmates. Unbelievably, the majority of the work was fantastic, on par or even better than the drawings we had done earlier in the class with our dominant hand. The professor explained in thus: because of the strangeness, because of how sure we all were about how terrible the piece would look, we all subconsciously pay that much more attention to what we are drawing. Every line suddenly becomes of the utmost importance as we struggle to make the charcoal go where we want it to go on the paper. By putting ourselves in the most uncomfortable of situations, we are forced to exist entirely within the present moment, unable to be distracted by the day-to-day musings that we can generally handle while drawing normally.
Of course, the goal of this exercise wasn't to convince us to draw off-hand forever. The main point, as he put it, was to apply this mode of thinking every time we go back to drawing, especially when we switched back to our dominant hand in the next pose. Every stroke is important, every shape is vital. We cannot let ourselves get too habituated in our present situation, or we risk wandering off the Path without ever realizing it. Always mind the present waking moment, even when doing something we've done a thousand times before. Chop wood, carry water.
The Importance of Importance
or, Significant Figures or, The Power of Perspective
One of the truly wonderful things about life is the simple vastness of the universe in which we live. From the endless reaches of the cosmos to the infinitesimal depths of subatomic mysteries, it is easy for many of us to forget just how much other stuff (read: not immediately relating to human life) there is out there. But for some, it is frighteningly easy to drift in the other direction; to feel lost in a sea of other people and other things, to feel utterly alone or insignificant in the midst of the much bigger and scarier world out there. But as the good Doctor once said, “I’ve never met anyone who wasn’t important.”
In the grand scheme of things, the path of the universe will carry on regardless of what choices people make, but rather than looking at it like every choice is meaningless, we must understand that each choice still has a profound impact on the people around us and the world we live in. It’s a bit of doublethink, perhaps, that our choices both matter and don’t matter at the same time. But a good analogy would be the trillions of drops of water that make up a stream. Throw a rock in the water, and it will still continue to flow, completely unimpeded by the stone. Even if you were to create a dam and try to totally stop the water, eventually it will pool up and overflow, either going around the dam or pushing through tiny little cracks. The water will always flow onward, as is the nature of a stream.
But from that one thrown stone, you’ve disrupted and changed the path of countless tiny little drops of water. They’ve gone right when they were planning to go left, some are forced backwards up the stream from the splash, and some are even taken completely out of the stream and tossed onto the shore. And of course no drop is ever alone. The bonds between water molecules are remarkably strong, and the movement of each little H2O tugs and moves dozens more around it. This is the world we see, the world we live in. Even if we don’t recognize it, everything we do has a rippling effect on the lives of everyone around us; some on people we know, some on people we will never meet. Those familiar with the Butterfly Effect will recognize the potential consequences that even a seemingly insignificant choice can have.
I believe that it is best to take balanced perspective of both such viewpoints. We must always strive to realize that the world will continue to turn, that our movements are only one part of a much greater flow that exists far above us. Our troubles, our fears, our frustrations; these are all really not as large as we imagine them. But, lest we feel too small and lost in the river, we must also understand the impact our choices have on others. Of course, this means it is imperative that we always take care to try and see what consequences our actions might have. We must see the truth of the situation before we simply act on our first instinct (more on impulse and daoism at a later date). But it also means that we have incredible potential to improve the lives of those around us, and that others can improve ours. Just as the journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step, every one of us has the possibility of creating great and wonderful things from even the smallest acts of good.
Impulse, Discernment, and Daoism
What is your first impulse when you find a bug in your home? Almost invariably, our first thought is to squish the thing. Whether out of fear, anger, or annoyance, we instinctively take action to kill the creature, even though very often it presents absolutely no threat to us. We are conditioned and raised in the modern world to despise all sorts of creepy crawly creatures, so this reaction is not surprising. However it does demonstrate how our impulses can lead us to do things that are frivolous, wanton, and off the Path. Simply because something feels right in the moment doesn’t mean you are acting in harmony by embracing it. Another example would be the sort of people that eat compulsively in reaction to stress or boredom. It is something that I have struggled with in the past, and even today I sometimes find myself drawn to the fridge for no other reason than procrastination. It is a habit that can range from being just unhealthy to absolutely life-threatening in some cases.
Instead of giving in to every one of these impulses, we should always take a moment to think before we act on them. How do I really feel about this action? Are my emotions clouding my judgement? Is this really the only or best course of action for this situation? The Dalai Lama calls this use of our faculties “discernment,” and that it is a vital step for us to truly live our lives more peacefully, more wholesomely, even simply more happily. Although it sounds silly to think about, it is surprising to see how often we are led by our impulses to act without thinking things all the way through. Once we recognize such situations in our everyday routines, we can then begin addressing them and righting ourselves from any number of bad habits and choices. Daoism is about seeing the truth in things, and that means that we must search for the truth of our own actions first of all. And while it may seem daunting to try and examine every action we take over the course of every single day, once you undertake the mindset of choosing your own path down the mountain, it becomes almost second nature to pause yourself before acting out of anger or fear and reevaluate the situation.
Like any new skill, it is difficult to begin, especially when we have been conditioned our entire lives in the opposite direction. In America, it is often a point of pride for people to act without thinking, to go in on nothing more than a “gut feeling.” On one hand, this can appear very Daoist indeed, to simply act in alignment with one’s nature and to not waste time overanalyzing the situation. But because so much of our culture has taken us off the Path already, it is imperative that we exercise our faculties of discernment to truly determine whether our instincts are on the Path or not. If our first reaction to a rude word is immediate violence, you can imagine all the sorts of trouble we could find ourselves in. Only after we have already developed a calm mind can we start to trust our gut feelings again, and even then our gut feelings and intuition are only informed by the breadth and depth of our past experiences. If we react strongly to something we have very little familiarity with, it once again brings up the need for us to introspect ourselves to see what it is we are truly having a reaction to.
Exercising discernment is a passive skill; once you begin to practice it, it is something you can constantly carry with you throughout your journey. It should always be on, always present to help you stop and breathe before committing to a rash decision. For further reading on discernment, I highly recommend the Dalai Lama’s Beyond Religion, a beautiful little book on pursuing a non-religious system of ethics.
Keep Calm and Carry Water
I should preface this by saying that I am an above average driver (I do my best to fight the stereotype). I get to my destinations smoothly and efficiently, have never caused any accidents, and have never even received a speeding ticket. That being said, I do not enjoy the act of driving. Due to a combination of some traumatic experiences in the past and my own sense of self-preservation, getting behind the wheel generally instills a certain anxiety within me. Even under the most ideal conditions, I tend to get an elevated heart rate, sweaty palms, and other symptoms of nervousness.
And of course, we almost never drive under ideal circumstances. Whether we are driving someone else’s car, facing the sun, or even just having a bad day, the situation on the road is honestly filled with hazards that could easily lead to a turn for the worse. But if we take a moment to breathe before we get started, we can find our center enough to move forward with confidence and purpose. Even when facing down something that terrifies us, indulging our sense of fear and dread will only make the situation worse. This is, I believe, the best mindset for approaching any of life’s darker moments. It’s not about denying the existence of fear, or denying the existence of danger. Recognizing the truth of the situation is the first step in working through it. Once we have grounded or mental state in reality, we can start to put our emotional state on the same level footing. And then, as the saying goes, we can continue to carry on down the Path.
How our brains fool us on climate, creationism, and the vaccine-autism link.
A bit of a read, but absolutely worth it. This article really demonstrates the need for us to separate our emotional attachment to political and social issues, to exercise our faculties of discernment as much as possible. Reality is reality, and no matter what you value in your life, denying the way things actually are will never make things better. Remain calm and keep your mind open to the evidence that is there.