Tao Te
Ching:
Lao Tzu’s Timeless Classic for Today
David Tuffley
Published by David Tuffley at Smashwords
Copyright 2010 David Tuffley
Smashwords Edition, License Notes
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Using the Tao to become more conscious
Using the Tao to cultivate oneself
Using the Tao to influence group dynamics
Using the Tao to refrain from action
A.The Essence of Taoism
As mentioned in the previous chapter, Zen is a blending of the ancient Chinese philosophy of Taoism with its deep reverence for Nature with Mahayana Buddhism.
To appreciate Zen, you must know something of Taoist philosophy. In working towards Satori, you need to bring your life into a harmonious relationship with the world, with Nature. Taoist philosophy is about how to do this.
A central idea in Taoism is avoiding extremes and always seeking the middle path on our journey through life. The objective is to negotiate the middle ground between opposites or extremes so effectively that no act is followed by a reaction. The net effect is one of neutrality. Finding the middle path means not needing to suffer the consequences of an act. In terms of the doctrine of Karma, it means knowing how to avoid bad reactions, or bad karma.
The practice of Zen means learning to live in this way so that we do not swing like a pendulum from one drama to the next, creating disturbances in our lives that get in the way of calm inner reflection. It is finding the Middle Path. The Taoist element of Zen encourages us to sense the world around us directly and to contemplate our impressions deeply. It advises against relying on the structures and belief systems that have been created by others and put forward as orthodox truth. Such ideologies remove us from a direct experience of life and effectively cut us off from our Intuition. As discussed in an earlier chapter, the seeker after Satori should cultivate their Intuition since this is the only way that a person can truly know the world, and that is from an experiential rather than intellectual position.
The Middle Path requires you to develop an awareness of the physical forces that shape our world and direct its events. Such forces operate uniformly at all levels, from the macrocosm to the microcosm. They operate in the universe as a whole and in the minds and lives of individual people. An understanding of these natural laws and the forces they direct gives a person the power to direct events in the world without resorting to force, by using attitude instead of action. Influence on others is achieved through guiding rather than ruling. The objective is always to avoid taking action that will elicit counter-reactions. In Nature, an excessive force in a particular direction tends to trigger the growth of an opposing force, and therefore the use of force cannot be the basis for establishing an enduring social condition.
The Zen practitioner comes to understand that everything in the universe is in a state of flux, and that the emotional and intellectual structures that we like to build for ourselves in order to feel secure and understand the world are likewise subject to change by external forces that are largely beyond our control. The challenge is to accept the inevitability of change and not waste our energy trying to prop up these impermanent structures, defending them against criticisms, and trying to convince others to believe in them so that they might become recognised as permanent truth.
Grasping the reality of the impermanence of all structures allows us to align ourselves with the forces of Nature that bring about incremental change in the social and physical world. We can embrace and support change whenever and wherever it wants to occur. Our alignment with the forces in Nature makes us a part of those forces. Our perceptual processes become more finely tuned because they are based on evolving reality, not on orthodox thinking. We see the world as it is, not as we believe it should be.
Finding the Middle Path and keeping to it is how the Zen practitioner seeking to achieve Satori must arrange their life so that enough peace and tranquillity exists in their inner world for the experience of Satori to occur. A person whose life is chaotic, lurching from one disaster to the next in a constant state of crisis is not in a state of mind conducive to experiencing Satori.
A.1.The Tao Te Ching
To help you find the Middle Path, the Tao Te Ching (The Book of the Tao) is an excellent source of insight. The book describes a force called the Tao that operates uniformly throughout the universe and is the causal agent of everything that happens. It explains how you can develop personal power through being in harmony with the Tao.
Written nearly 2,500 years ago, the Tao Te Ching is acknowledged to be a work of the most profound depth, though written in deceptively short, simple chapters numbering only 81 in total. It is one of most translated books in history, with well over 50 translations in English alone. The Tao Te Ching exercises a powerfully transformative effect on those who contemplate it.
The Tao Te Ching is said to have been written by Lao Tzu, the Custodian of the Imperial Archives during the reign of the Chou Dynasty, though some researchers believe that Lao Tzu, which translates as the honorific term Old Master is a composite of several people. This practice is not unheard of in the world of literary classics. The works attributed to William Shakespeare, for example, are thought by some scholars to be the combined work of several people, including Shakespeare himself, his fellow actors in the troupe, and one Sir Henry Neville, a courtier and distant relative of Shakespeare.
Whether Lao Tzu was one man or several, the Tao Te Ching is clearly a reaction to a time of great political unrest. China was comprised of hundreds of warring states that came into frequent conflict with each other in a ceaseless struggle for dominance. Aggression was met with escalating aggression until it seemed the Middle Kingdom would become a wasteland. The Tao Te Ching was written for an audience of leaders and people of influence so they might be guided in the ways of peace and harmony with Nature.
The Tao Te Ching is the result of the author’s careful observations of the unfolding patterns of Nature. From these observations a set of underlying principles was deduced that cause the world to behave in the way it does. These principles are in the abstract, in the same way that a mathematical formula is an abstraction. Knowledge of these principles is tremendously helpful for a person seeking harmony and balance, just as the mathematical formula Pi r squared is helpful for calculating the area of a circle, any circle.
Lao Tzu came to discern the dynamically interconnected relationship of all things. He then distilled his observations into this modest little book. He called this unifying field of forces the Tao (or the Way in English). The Tao Te Ching is therefore something of an ancient Chinese Physics treatise.
The abstraction of the Tao is difficult to express in purely logical terms, so the author resorted to paradox in much the same way as Zen Koans do. This induces an intuitive understanding that complements logical awareness.
An important principle in this unifying field of forces is polarity. Lao Tzu’s understanding of how the Universe began matches closely what we today would recognise as the Big Bang theory. Before the bang, there was ‘The Supreme Absolute’ which had limitless undifferentiated potential but no physical existence. Then, in the instant of the bang the Supreme Absolute divided itself from non-existence in an event that created space and time and which is characterised by on-going cause and effect phenomena. This physical universe is founded upon two charged states, yin (negative) and yang (positive). Due to the complementary polarity of matter and energy, these constantly separate and regroup to create the changing, evolving physical reality that is the universe we know.
Everything in the phenomenal universe comes into existence through the dynamically interacting polarities of yin and yang. The way that yin and yang interact is governed by the laws of physics, which Lao Tzu called the Tao. Thus we can view the Tao as an indication of the larger purpose of the Supreme Absolute. Lao Tzu reasoned that if the Absolute wanted to experience itself by creating a universe in which multitudes of conscious points-of-presence create experiences by interacting with each other, then our purpose (as points-of-presence) should be to help the Absolute get a good look at itself by investigating, observing, and emulating Nature.
Taoists therefore work to become aware of and understand the laws of Nature with a view to harmonising with them, particularly as they manifest in human society. The seeker after Satori cultivates their understanding of the Tao and lives in harmony with Nature. In this way, they create the right conditions within themselves and in their environment for Satori to spontaneously occur.
A.2.Knowing the Tao
Lao Tzu often describes the behaviour and mindset of the enlightened person, by which he means the standard we should aspire to and follow in order to experience Satori. The enlightened person is wise in the ways of the Tao, and has learned to live in harmony with it. Satori naturally follows.
Below is a faithful rendering into 21st Century language of the original 81 chapters of the Tao Te Ching, which was expressed in a miracle of brevity in just 5,000 Chinese characters. Each paragraph begins with a bold topic sentence or phrase that sums up the essence of each chapter. If you notice repetition, it is because it existed in the original.
What is the Tao? The Tao is analogous to the laws of Physics, which exist only as abstractions. The Tao cannot be seen directly, but its effects can be observed in the world of forms, hence the saying from the Tao Te Ching the Tao that can be seen is not the real Tao. The mathematical formula for calculating the area of a circle is pi (22 divided by 7) multiplied by the square of the radius of the circle. This formula is an abstraction that can be applied to any circle at any scale of magnitude from an atom up to the universe itself. The formula is an example of the Tao expressed in the language of Physics.
Another example from Physics is Isaac Newton’s second law of motion; the mutual forces of action and reaction between two bodies are equal, opposite and collinear. In the Tao Te Ching, this principle is discussed many times. Essentially, the enlightened person understands the operation of this law in the social sphere and ensures that any action they take is done with full awareness of the likely reactions, or, they refrain from taking action altogether.
In a general sense, the Tao can be understood as the agent by which forms evolve. It is a pervasive, underlying influence that evolves one form into its own opposite and then back again in an on-going cycle of alternating polar opposites.
Alignment with the subtle. An enlightened person works constantly to establish the Tao in their awareness, and to harmonise their mind and body with the Tao. They do not use force to achieve their ends because they know that to do so is likely to cause an equal and opposite reaction. In this way they avoid a problem of their own making. Instead, they work at the level of underlying cause and with little apparent effort are able to bring about the outcome they want. The enlightened person therefore knows that when they are in step with the Tao in worldly affairs, their endeavours can be completed without adverse effects.