Reference: Taoism
[NOTE: In color are Vinaire’s comments.]
Selflessness, cleanliness, and emotional calm are the preliminaries to arriving at full self-knowledge, but they must be climaxed by deep meditation. The result will be a condition of alert waiting known as “sitting with a blank mind.”
Taoist “adepts”—as we shall call the practitioners of this second kind of Taoism because all were engaged in training programs of some sort, many of them demanding—were not willing to settle for the philosophers’ goal of managing their allotments of the Tao efficiently. They wanted to go beyond conserving to increasing the quota of the Tao they had to work with. In accounting terms we can say that if Philosophical Taoists worked at increasing net profits by cutting costs (reducing needless energy expenditures), Taoist adepts wanted to increase gross income.
Taoist “adepts” want to go beyond conserving to increasing the quota of the Tao they have to work with.
The word ch’i cries out to be recognized as the rightful entry to this second school, for though it literally means breath, it actually means vital energy. The Taoists used it to refer to the power of the Tao that they experienced coursing through them—or not coursing because it was blocked—and their main object was to further its flow. Ch’i fascinated these Taoists. Blake registered their feelings precisely when he exclaimed, “Energy is delight,” for energy is the life force and the Taoists loved life. To be alive is good; to be more alive is better; to be always alive is best, hence the Taoist immortality cults.
The word ch’i though it literally means breath, it actually means vital energy. The Taoists use it to refer to the power of the Tao that they experience coursing through them.
To accomplish their end of maximizing ch’i, these Taoists worked with three things: matter, movement, and their minds. Respecting matter, they tried eating things—virtually everything, it would seem—to see if ch’i could be augmented nutritionally. In the course of this experimentation, they developed a remarkable pharmacopia of medicinal herbs, but in a way this was incidental. What they really wanted was not cure but increase—increase and extension of the life force, the ultimate guarantor of which would be the much-sought elixir of life that would insure physical immortality. Sexual experiments were also performed. In one such experiment men hypothesized that if they retained their semen during intercourse by pressing the ball of the thumb against the base of the penis at the moment of ejaculation, thereby diverting the semen into their own bodies, they would absorb the yin of their female partners without dissipating their own yang energy. Breathing exercises were also developed. Working with air, the subtlest form of matter, they sought to draw ch’i from the atmosphere.
To accomplish their end of maximizing ch’i, these Taoists worked with three things: matter, movement, and their minds. Respecting matter, they tried eating things to see if ch’i could be augmented nutritionally.
These efforts to extract ch’i from matter in its solid, liquid, and gaseous forms were supplemented by programs of bodily movement such as t’ai chi chuan, which gathers calisthenics, dance, meditation, yin/yang philosophy, and martial art into a synthesis that in this case was designed to draw ch’i from the cosmos and dislodge blocks to its internal flow. This last was the object of acupuncture as well.
These efforts to extract ch’i were supplemented by programs of bodily movement such as t’ai chi chuan.
Finally, turning to the mind itself, contemplatives, many of them hermits, developed Taoist meditation. This practice involved shutting out distractions and emptying the mind to the point where the power of the Tao might bypass bodily filters and enter the self directly.
This third way of increasing ch’i is more abstract than the others, so more needs to be said about it. For the reader who has read this book’s chapter on Hinduism, the quickest gateway to meditational Taoism is to recollect what was said there about raja yoga, the way to God through psychophysical exercises. Whether or not China borrowed from India on this score, the physical postures and concentration techniques of Taoist meditation are so reminiscent of raja yoga that sinologists import the Sanskrit term and call it Taoist yoga. Still, the Chinese gave their yoga a distinctive twist. Their ubiquitous social concern led them to press the possibility that the ch’i that yogis accumulated through meditation could be transmitted psychically to the community to enhance its vitality and harmonize its affairs. Side by side with the Confucianists, who were working on the socializing te of moral example and ritualized etiquette, Taoist yogis sought to harness the Tao directly, drawing it first into their own heart-minds and then beaming it to others. Yogis who managed this feat would for the most part be unnoticed, but their life-giving enterprise did more for the community than the works of other benefactors.
Turning to the mind itself, many of the Taoists developed Taoist meditation, very similar to the raja yoga of Hinduism. Chinese give their yoga a distinctive twist of transmitting the ch’i accumulated through meditation, psychically, to the community to enhance its vitality.
We border on Philosophical Taoism here because animating this yogic Taoism was a dawning fascination in China with the inner as opposed to the outer self. Children do not separate these two sides of their being, and neither did early peoples. Yogic or meditational Taoism arose as the advancing self-consciousness of the Chinese brought subjective experience to full view. Novel, momentous, exciting, this world of the inner self invited exploration. So enthralling did it appear to its early explorers that matter suffered by comparison; it was mere shell and accretion. Still, the inner world housed a problem. Successive deposits of worry and distraction so silted the soul that their deposits had to be removed until “the self as it was meant to be” could surface. Pure consciousness would then appear, and the individual would see not merely “things perceived” but “that by which we perceive.”
This yogic Taoism was a dawning fascination in China with the inner as opposed to the outer self. Children do not separate these two sides of their being, and neither did early peoples.
To arrive at this inwardness it was necessary to reverse all self-seeking and cultivate perfect cleanliness of thought and body. Pure spirit can be known only in a life that is “garnished and swept.” Only where all is clean will it reveal itself; therefore “put self aside.” Perturbing emotions must likewise be quelled. Ruffling the surface of the mind, they prevent introspection from seeing past them to the springs of consciousness beneath. (The proximity to Philosophical Taoism is becoming strong.) Desire and revulsion, grief and joy, delight and annoyance—each must subside if the mind is to return to its original purity, for in the end only peace and stillness are good for it. Let anxiety be dispelled and harmony between the mind and its cosmic source will come unsought.
It is close at hand, stands indeed at our very side; yet is intangible, a thing that by reaching for cannot be got. Remote it seems as the furthest limit of the Infinite. Yet it is not far off; every day we use its power. For the Way of the Vital Spirit fills our whole frames, yet man cannot keep track of it. It goes, yet has not departed. It comes, yet is not here. It is muted, makes no note that can be heard, yet of a sudden we find that it is there in the mind. It is dim and dark, showing no outward form, yet in a great stream it flowed into us at our birth.
To arrive at this inwardness it was necessary to reverse all self-seeking and cultivate perfect cleanliness of thought and body. Pure spirit can be known only in a life that is “garnished and swept.” This approach is very similar to Buddhism.
Selflessness, cleanliness, and emotional calm are the preliminaries to arriving at full self-knowledge, but they must be climaxed by deep meditation. “Bide in silence, and the radiance of the spirit shall come in and make its home.” For this to happen all outward impressions must be stilled and the senses withdrawn to a completely interior point of focus. Postures paralleling the Indian asanas were recommended, and the breath must be similarly controlled; it must be as soft and light as that of an infant, or even an embryo in the womb. The result will be a condition of alert waiting known as “sitting with a blank mind.”
Selflessness, cleanliness, and emotional calm are the preliminaries to arriving at full self-knowledge, but they must be climaxed by deep meditation. The result will be a condition of alert waiting known as “sitting with a blank mind.”
And when the realization arrives, what then? With it come truth, joy, and power. The climactic insight of meditational Taoism came with the impact of finality, everything at last having fallen into place. The condition could not be described as merely pleasurable. The direct perception of the source of one’s awareness as “serene and immovable, like a monarch on a throne,” brought joy unlike any hitherto known. The social utility of the condition, however, lay in the extraordinary power it provided over people and things, a power in fact which “could shift Heaven and Earth.” “To the mind that is still, the whole universe surrenders.” We have spoken of India in connection with this psychic power, but St. John of the Cross offers an identical promise: “Without labor you shall subject the peoples, and things shall be subject to you.” Without lifting a finger overtly, a ruler who was adept in “stillness” could order a whole people with his mystical-moral power. A ruler who is desireless himself and has this much psychic power automatically turns his subjects from their unruly desires. He rules without even being known to rule.
The sage relies on actionless activity;
Puts himself in the background; but is always to the fore.
Remains outside; but is always there.
Is it not just because he does not strive for any personal end
That all his personal ends are fulfilled?
The climactic insight of meditational Taoism came with the impact of finality, everything at last having fallen into place. The social utility of the condition, however, lay in the extraordinary power it provided over people and things.
The Taoist yogis recognized that they could not hope for much understanding from the masses, and they made no attempt to publicize their position. When they did write their words tended to be veiled and cryptic, open to one interpretation by initiates and another by the general public. Part of the reason they wrote this way doubtless stemmed from their sensitivity to the lampooning that mysticism attracts from the uncongenial. We find even Chuang Tzu burlesquing their breathing exercises, reporting that these people “expel the used air with great energy and inhale the fresh air. Like bears, they climb trees in order to breathe with greater ease.” Mencius joined in the fun. He likened those who sought psychic shortcuts to social harmony to impatient farmers who tug gently on their crops each night to speed their growth. Despite such satire Taoist yoga had an appreciable core of practitioners. Some sinologists consider it the basic perspective from which the Tao Te Ching was written. If this is true it is a testament to the veiled language of the book, for it is usually read in the philosophical way we shall come to. Before we turn to that way, however, we must introduce the third major branch of Taoism, which is religious.
Taoist Yoga was lampooned by critics. The Taoist yogis recognized that they could not hope for much understanding from the masses, and they made no attempt to publicize their position.
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