MYTHS AND DOCTRINES OF TAOISM
Taoism and Buddhism—The Tao—Taoism and Confucianism—Lao Tze and
Osiris—The “Old Boy” Myth—Lao Tze goes West—Kwang Tze—Prince who
found the Water of Life—The “Great Mother” in Taoism—Taoism and
Egyptian Ptahism—Doctrine of the Logos—Indian Doctrines in
China—Taoism and Brahmanism—Metal Searchers as Carriers of Egyptian
and Babylonian Cultures—The Tao and Water—The Tao as “Mother of All
Things”—Fertilizing Dew and Creative Tears—The Tao and Artemis—The
Gate Symbol—Tao and Good Order—The World’s Ages in Taoism—Taoists
rendered Invulnerable like Achilles, &c.—The Tao as the Elixir of
Life—Breathing Exercises—The Impersonal God—Lao Tze and Disciples
deified and worshipped.
There are three religions in China, or, as native scholars put it,
“three Teachings”, namely Taoism, Confucianism, and Buddhism. Pure
Taoism, as taught by Lao Tze, is, like the Buddhism of its founder,
Siddhartha Gautama, metaphysical and mystical. It is similarly based on
a vague and somewhat bewildering conception of the origin of life and
the universe; it recognizes a creative and directing force which, at
the beginning, caused Everything to come out of Nothing. This force,
when in action, is called the Tao. It is so called from the time when
it began to move, to create, to cause Unity to be. The Tao existed
before then, but it was nameless, and utterly incomprehensible. It
existed, some writers say, even when there was nothing. Others go the
length of asserting that it existed before there was nothing. We can
understand what is meant by “nothing”, but we cannot understand what
the Nameless was before it was manifested as the Tao.
The Tao is not God; it is impersonal. Taoists must make unquestioning
submission to the Tao, which must be allowed to have absolute sway in
the individual, in society, in the world at large. Taoism does not,
like Buddhism, yearn for extinction, dissolution, or ultimate loss of
identity and consciousness in the nebulous Nirvana. Nor does it, like
Buddhism, teach that life is not worth living—that it is sorrowful to
be doomed to be reborn. Rather, it conceives of a perfect state of
existence in this world, and of prolonged longevity in the next. All
human beings can live happily if they become like little children,
obeying the law (Tao) as a matter of course, following in “the way”
(Tao) without endeavouring to understand, or having any desire to
understand, what the Tao is. The obedient, unquestioning state of mind
is reached by means of Inaction—mental Inaction. The Tao drifts the
meritorious individual towards perfection, out of darkness into light.
Those who submit to the Tao know nothing of ethical ideals; they are in
no need of definite beliefs. It is unnecessary to teach virtue when all
are virtuous; it is unnecessary to have rites and ceremonies when all
are perfect; it is unnecessary to be concerned about evil when evil
ceases to exist. The same idea prevailed among the Brahmanic sages of
India, whose Krita or Perfect Age was without gods or devils. Being
perfect, the people required no religion.
Confucianism is not concerned with metaphysical abstractions, or with
that sense of the Unity of all things and all beings in the One, which
is summed up in the term “Mysticism”. It maintains a somewhat agnostic,
but not irreligious frame of mind, confessing inability to deal with
the spirit world, or to understand, or theorize about, its mysteries.
It recognizes the existence of God and of spirits. “Respect the
spirits,” said Confucius, “but keep them at a distance....” He also
said: “Wisdom has been imparted to me. If God were to destroy this
wisdom (his system of ethics) the generations to come could not inherit
it.”
Whether or not Confucius ever heard of the system of Lao Tze is
uncertain. If he did, it certainly made no appeal to him. His own
system of instruction was intensely practical. It was concerned mainly
with ethical and political ideals—with political morality. He was no
believer in Inaction. The salvation of mankind, according to his
system, could be achieved by strict adherence to the ideals of right
living and right thinking, and a robust and vigorous application of
them in the everyday life of individuals and the State.
The reputed founder or earliest teacher of Taoism was Lao Tze, about
whom little or nothing is known. He is believed to have been born in
604 B.C., and to have died soon after 532 B.C. Confucius was born in
551 B.C., and died in 479 B.C. There are Chinese traditions that the
two sages met on at least one occasion, but these are not credited by
Western or modern native Chinese scholars. Confucius makes no direct
reference to Lao Tze in his writings.
Lao Tze [462] means “Old Boy”, as Osiris, in his Libyan form, is said
to mean the “Old Man”. [463] He was given this name by his followers,
because “his mother carried him in her womb for seventy-two years, so
that when he was at length cut out of it his hair was already white”.
Julius Cæsar was reputed to have been born in like manner; so was the
Gaelic hero, Goll MacMorna, who, as we gather from Dunbar, was known in
the Lowlands as well as the Highlands; the poet makes one of his
characters exclaim,
My fader, meikle Gow mas Mac Morn,
Out of his moderis (mother’s) wame was shorn.
The same legend clings to the memory of Thomas the Rhymer, who is
referred to in Gaelic as “the son of the dead woman” (mac na mna
marbh), because his mother died before the operation was performed.
Shakespeare’s Macduff “was from his mother’s womb untimely ripped”.
[464]
It may be that this widespread birth-story had its origin in Egypt.
Plutarch, in his treatise on the Mystery of Osiris and Isis, tells that
Set (the ancient god who became a devil) was “born neither at the
proper time, nor by the right place”, but that he “forced his way
through a wound which he had made in his mother’s side”.
Different forms of the legend are found in China. According to the
traditions preserved in the “Bamboo Books”, which are of uncertain
antiquity, the Emperor Yao was born fourteen months after he was
conceived, the Emperor Yu emerged from his mother’s back, and the
Emperor Yin from his mother’s chest. The Aryo-Indian hero, Karna, a
prominent figure in the Mahábhárata, emerged from one of his mother’s
ears; he was a son of Surya, the sun-god.
According to Taoist lore (after Buddhism and Taoism were partly fused
in China), Lao Tze appeared from time to time in China during the early
dynasties in different forms, and with different names. He had the
personal knowledge of the decline of the influence of the Tao from the
Perfect Age. After Fu-hi and other sovereigns disturbed the harmonies
of heaven and earth, “the manners of the people, from being good and
simple, became bad and mean”. He came to cleanse the stream of
spiritual life at its source, and was ultimately reborn as Lao Tze,
under the Plum Tree of Longevity, having been conceived under the
influence of a star in the constellation of the Great Bear. Li (plum
tree) was his surname.
Lao Tze is said to have held a position in the Royal Library of Kau.
When he perceived that the State showed signs of decadence, he resolved
to leave the world, like the Indian heroes, Yudhishthira and his
brothers. He went westwards, apparently believing, as did Confucius,
“that the Most Holy was to be found in the West”. On entering the pass
of Hsien-Ku (in modern Ling-pao, Ho-nan province) the Warden, Yin Hsi,
a Taoist, welcomed the sage and set before him a dish of tea. Lao Tze
sat down to drink tea with his friend. This was the beginning of the
tea-drinking custom between host and guest in China. [465]
Said the Warden, “And so you are going into retirement. I pray you to
write me a book before you leave.”
Lao Tze consented, and composed the Tao Teh King, [466] which is
divided into two parts, and contains over 5000 words.
When he had finished writing, he gave the manuscript to the Warden,
bade him farewell, and went on his way. It is not known where he died.
The most prominent of Lao Tze’s disciples was Kwang Tze, who lived in
the fourth century B.C. Sze-ma Khien, the earliest Chinese historian of
note, who died about 85 B.C., says that Kwang Tze wrote “with purpose
to calumniate the system of Confucius and exalt the mysteries of Lao
Tze”. But although he wrote much, “no one could give practical
application to his teaching”. Other famous Taoist writers were Han Fei
Tze, who committed suicide in 233 B.C., and Liu An, prince of Hwai-nan,
and grandson of the founder of the Han Dynasty, who took his own life
in 122 B.C., having become involved in a treasonable plot.
Another form of the legend is that this prince discovered the Water of
Life. As soon as he drank of it, his body became so light that he
ascended to the Celestial Regions in broad daylight and was seen by
many. As he rose he let fall the cup from which he had drunk. His dogs
lapped up the water and followed him. Then his poultry drank from the
cup and likewise rose in the air and vanished from sight. Apparently it
was not only the poor Indians “with untutored minds” who thought their
dogs (not to speak of their hens) would be admitted to the “equal sky”,
there to bear them company.
It is generally believed by Oriental scholars that both Taoism and
Confucianism are of greater antiquity than their reputed founders.
Confucius insisted that he was “a transmitter, not a maker”, and Lao
Tze is found to refer to “an ancient”, “a sage”, and “a writer on war”,
as if he had been acquainted with writings that have not come down to
us.
There is internal evidence in the Taoistic texts of Lao Tze and Kwang
Tze that the idea of the Tao had an intimate association in early times
with the ancient Cult of the West—the cult of the mother-goddess who
had her origin in water. The priestly theorists instructed the
worshippers of the Great Mother that at the beginning she came into
existence as an egg, or a lotus bloom from which rose the Creator, the
sun-god, or that she was a Pot containing water from which all things
have come—the pot being the inexhaustible womb of Nature, and the
symbol of the Great Mother-goddess.
But they themselves were not satisfied with this myth. They recognized
that there was at work at the beginning a force—a law which “opened the
way”, a phrase which may have had a physical significance but
ultimately became a mystical one. In Chinese Taoism, this force is the
Tao which is manifested in order, stability, and rightness; it is
Truth.
The Ancient Egyptian philosophers believed, at as remote a time as the
Pyramid Texts period (c. 2500 B.C.), that everything had origin in
Mind. The Universe was the idea of Ptah, the “opener”; he conceived it
in his “Heart” (Mind); when he expressed the idea, the Universe came
into existence.
Ptah, the great, is the mind and tongue of the gods....
It (the mind) is the one that bringeth forth every successful
issue.
It is the tongue which repeats the thought of the mind:
It (the mind) was the fashioner of all gods...
At a time when every divine word
Came into existence by the thought of the mind,
And the command of the tongue. [467]
Although Breasted first thought that this fragment was a survival from
the Empire period (c. 1500 B.C.), he has since become convinced, like
Erman, that it must, on the basis of orthography, be relegated to the
Pyramid Age.
“Is there not here,” Breasted asks, “the primeval germ of the later
Alexandrian doctrine of the ‘Logos’?” [468]
In India Brahma (neuter) was the World Soul, “that subtle essence”
which, according to the composers of the Upanishads, exists in
everything that is, but cannot be seen. The personal Brahma, as
Prajapati, arose, at the beginning, from this impersonal World Soul.
“Mind (or Soul, manas),” an Indian sage has declared, “was created from
the non-existent. Mind created Prajapati. Prajapati created offspring.
All this, whatever exists, rests absolutely on mind.”
Another Indian sage writes:
“At first the Universe was not anything. There was neither sky, nor
earth, nor air. Being non-existent, it resolved, ‘Let me be.’ It
became fervent. From that fervour smoke was produced. It again
became fervent. From the fervour fire was produced. Afterwards the
fire became ‘rays’ [469] and the ‘rays’ condensed into a cloud,
producing the sea. A magical formula (Dasahotri) was created.
Prajapati is the Dasahotri.”
When the Rev. Dr. Chalmers of Canton translated the Taoist Texts into
English in 1868 [470], he wrote: “I have thought it better to leave the
word ‘Tao’ untranslated, both because it has given the name to the
sect—the Taoists—and because no English word is its exact equivalent.
Three terms suggest themselves—‘the Way’, ‘Reason’, and ‘the Word’; but
they are all liable to objection. Were we guided by etymology, ‘the
Way’ would come nearest to the original, and in one or two passages the
idea of a Way seems to be in the term; but this is too materialistic to
serve the purpose of a translation. ‘Reason’ again seems to be more
like a quality or attribute of some conscious Being than Tao is. I
would translate it by ‘the Word’ in the sense of the Logos, but this
would be like settling the question which I wish to leave open, viz.
what amount of resemblance there is between the Logos of the New
Testament and this Tao, which is its nearest representative in
Chinese.”
The New Testament doctrine of the Logos may here be reproduced by way
of comparison, the quotation being from Dr. Weymouth’s idiomatic
translation, which may be compared with the authorized versions: [471]
In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the
Word was God. He was in the beginning with God. All things came
into being through Him, and apart from Him nothing that exists came
into being. In Him was Life, and that Life was the Light of men.
The Light shines in the darkness, and the darkness has not
overpowered it.
There was a man sent from God, whose name was John. He came as a
witness, in order that he might give testimony concerning the
Light—so that all might believe through him. He was not the Light,
but he existed that he might give testimony concerning the Light.
The true Light was that which illumines every man by its coming
into the world. He was in the world, and the world came into
existence through Him, and the world did not recognize Him.
The meaning of the word “Tao”, says Max Von Brandt, “has never been
explained or understood,” and he adds, “Like the Hellenistic ‘Logos’,
it is at once the efficient and the material cause.” [472] Professor G.
Foot Moore says, “Tao is literally ‘way’; like corresponding words in
many languages, ‘course’, ‘method’, ‘order’, ‘norm’.” [473] Archdeacon
Hardwick [474] was “disposed to argue” that the system of Taoism was
founded on the idea of “some power resembling the ‘Nature’ of modern
speculators. The indefinite expression ‘Tao’ was adopted to denominate
an abstract cause, or the initial principle of life and order, to which
worshippers were able to assign the attributes of immateriality,
eternity, immensity, invisibility.”
Canon Farrar has written in this connection: “We have long personified
under the name of Nature the sum total of God’s law as observed in the
physical world; and now the notion of Nature as a distinct, living,
independent entity seems to be ineradicable alike from our literature
and our systems of philosophy.” [475]
Dr. Legge comments on this passage: “But it seems to me that this
metaphorical use of the word ‘nature’ for the Cause and Ruler of it
implies the previous notion of Him, that is, of God, in the mind.”
[476]
Dr. Legge notes that in Lao Tze’s treatise “Tao appears as the
spontaneously operating cause of all movement in the phenomena of the
universe.... Tao is a phenomenon, not a positive being, but a mode of
being.” [477]
Others have rendered Tao as “God”. But “the old Taoists had no idea of
a personal God,” says Dr. Legge.
De Groot [478] refers to Tao as “the ‘Path’, the unalterable course of
Nature,” and adds that the “reverential awe of the mysterious
influences of Nature is the fundamental principle of an ancient
religious system usually styled by foreigners Tao-ism.”
The idea of the Chinese Tao resembles somewhat that of the Indian
Brahma (neuter). Lao Tze says: “It (Tao) was undetermined and
perfected, existing before the heaven and the earth. Peaceful was it
and incomprehensible, alone and unchangeable, filling everything, the
inexhaustible mother of all things. I know not its name, and therefore
I call it Tao. I seek after its name and I call it the Great. In
greatness it flows on for ever, it retires and returns. Therefore is
the Tao great.”
In his chapter “The Manifestation of the Mystery”, Lao Tze says:
“We look at it (Tao), and we do not see it, and we name it ‘the
Equable’.
“We listen to it, and we do not hear it, and we name it ‘the
Inaudible’.
“We try to grasp it, and do not get hold of it, and we name it ‘the
Subtle’.
“With these three qualities, it cannot be made the subject of
description; and hence we blend them together and obtain ‘The
One’.”
Some scholars, like Joseph Edkins and Victor von Strauss, have
contended that Lao Tze was attempting to express the ideas of Jehovah
in Hebrew theology. Others incline to the belief that the influence of
Indian Brahmanic speculations had reached China at an early period and
inaugurated the intuitional teaching found in Lao Tze’s treatise.
The idea of the first cause had arisen in India before the close of the
Vedic Age. At the beginning:
There was neither existence nor non-existence,
The Kingdom of air, nor the sky beyond.
What was there to contain, to cover, in—
Was it but vast, unfathomed depths of water?
There was no death there, nor Immortality:
No sun was there, dividing day from night.
Then was there only THAT, resting within itself.
Apart from it, there was not anything.
At first within the darkness veiled in darkness,
Chaos unknowable, the All lay hid.
Till straitway from the formless void made manifest
By the great power of heat was born the germ. [479]
The Great Unknown was by the later Vedic poets referred to by the
interrogative pronoun “What?” (Ka).
In the Indian Khandogya Upanishad, the sage tells a pupil to break open
a fruit. He then asks, “What do you see?” and receiving the reply,
“Nothing”, says, “that subtle essence which you do not perceive there,
of that very essence this great Nyagrodha tree exists. Believe me, my
son, that which is the subtle essence, in it all that exists has
itself. It is the True. It is self; and thou, my son, art it.” [480]
The idea of the oneness and unity of all things is the basic principle
of mysticism.
There is true knowledge. Learn thou it is this:
To see one changeless Life in all the lives,
And in the Separate, One Inseparable. [481]
Dr. Legge in his commentary on The Texts of Taoism, asks his readers to
mark well the following predicates of the Tao:
“Before there were heaven and earth, from of old, there It was
securely existing. From It came the mysterious existence of
spirits; from It the mysterious existence of Ti (God). It produced
heaven. It produced earth.” [482]
Lao Tze had probably never been in India, but that passage from his
writings might well have been composed by one of the Brahmanic sages
who composed the Upanishads.
The explanation may be that in Brahmanism and Taoism we have traces of
the influence of Babylonian and Egyptian schools of thought. No direct
proof is available in this connection. It is possible, however, that
the ancient sages who gave oral instruction to their pupils were the
earliest missionaries on the trade-routes. The search for wealth had,
as has been shown, a religious incentive. It is unlikely, therefore,
that only miners and traders visited distant lands in which precious
metals and jewels were discovered. Expeditions, such as those of the
Egyptian rulers that went to Punt for articles required in the temples,
were essentially religious expeditions. It was in the temples that the
demand for gold and jewels was stimulated, and each temple had its
workshops with their trade secrets. The priests of Egypt were the
dyers, and they were the earliest alchemists [483] of whom we have
knowledge. Such recipes as are found recorded in the Leyden papyrus
were no doubt kept from the common people.
Associated with the search for metals was the immemorial quest of the
elixir of life, which was undoubtedly a priestly business—one that
required the performance of religious ceremonies of an elaborate
character. Metals and jewels, as we have seen, as well as plants,
contained the “soul substance” that was required to promote health and
to ensure longevity in this world and in the next. It was, no doubt,
the priestly prospectors, and not the traders and working miners, who
first imparted to jade its religious value as a substitute for gold and
jewels.
When the searchers for wealth introduced into India and China the god
Ptah’s potter’s wheel they may well have introduced too the doctrine of
the Logos, found in the pyramid-age Ptah hymn quoted above, in which
the World Soul is the “mind” of the god, and the active principle “the
tongue” that utters “the Word”.
If they did so—the hypothesis does not seem to be improbable—it may be
that as Buddhism was in India mixed with Naga worship, and was imported
into Tibet and China as a fusion of metaphysical speculations and crude
idolatrous beliefs and practices, the priestly philosophies of Egypt
and Babylonia were similarly associated with the debris of primitive
ideas and ceremonies when they reached distant lands. As a matter of
fact, it is found that in both these culture centres this fusion was
maintained all through their histories. Ptah might be the “Word” to the
priests, but to the common people he remained the artisan-god for
thousands of years—the god who hammered out the heavens and set the
world in order—a form of Shu who separated the heavens from the earth,
as did Pʼan Ku in China.
In India and China, as in ancient Egypt, the doctrine of the Logos, in
its earliest and vaguest form, was associated with the older doctrine
that life and the universe emerged at the beginning from the womb of
the mother-goddess, who was the active principle in water, or the
personification of that principle.
In one of the several Indian creation myths, Prajapati emerges, like
the Egyptian Sun-god Horus, from the lotus-bloom floating on the
primordial waters. The lotus is the flower form of the Great Mother,
who in Egypt is Hathor.
Another myth tells that after the heat caused the rays to arise, and
the rays caused a cloud to form, and the cloud became water, the
Self-Existent Being (here the Great Father) created a seed. He flung
the seed into the waters, and it became a golden egg. From the egg came
forth the personal Brahma (Prajapati). [484] Because Brahma came from
the waters (Narah), and they were his first home or path (ayana), he is
called Narayana. [485]
Here we have the “path” or “way”, the Chinese Tao in one of its phases.
When the Tao (neuter) became “active”, it did not manifest itself as a
Great Father, however, but as a Great Mother. The passive Tao is
nameless; the active Tao has a name. Lao Tze’s great treatise, The Tao
Teh King, opens:
“The Tao that can be trodden is not the enduring and unchanging Tao.
The name that can be named is not the enduring and unchanging name,
(Conceived of as) having no name, it is the Originator of heaven
and earth;
(Conceived of as) having a name, it is the Mother of all things.”
[486]
The creation myths embedded in the writings of Lao Tze are exceedingly
vague.
“The Tao produced One; One produced Two; Two produced Three; Three
produced All things. All things leave behind them the Obscurity
(out of which they have come), and go forward to embrace the
Brightness (into which they have emerged), while they are
harmonized by the Breath of Vacancy.” [487]
Another passage seems to indicate that the One, first produced, was the
Mother, and that the two produced by her were Heaven and Earth—the god
of the sky and the goddess of the earth:
“Heaven and Earth (under the guidance of Tao) unite together and
send down the sweet dew, which, without the direction of men,
reaches equally everywhere as of its own accord.” [488]
The fertilizing dew, like the creative tears of Egyptian and Indian
deities, gave origin to earth and its plants, and to all living things.
But no such details are given by Lao Tze. He is content to suggest that
the Tao as “the Honoured Ancestor” appears to have been before God.
In his chapter, “The Completion of Material Forms”, he refers to the
female valley spirit. “The valley,” says Legge, “is used metaphorically
as a symbol of ‘emptiness’ or ‘vacancy’, and the ‘spirit of the valley’
is ‘the female mystery’—the Tao which is ‘the mother of all things’.”
Chalmers renders Chapter VI as follows:
“The Spirit (like perennial spring) of the Valley never dies. This
(Spirit) I call the abyss-mother. The passage of the abyss-mother I
call the root of heaven and earth. Ceaselessly it seems to endure,
and it is employed without effort.”
Dr. Legge’s rendering is in verse:
The valley spirit dies not, aye the same;
The female mystery thus do we name.
Its gate, from which at first they issued forth,
Is called the root from which grew heaven and earth.
Long and unbroken does its power remain,
Used gently, and without the touch of pain. [489]
The symbolism of this short chapter is of special interest, and seems
to throw light on the origin of the myths that were transformed by Lao
Tze into philosophical abstractions. We find the “female mystery” or
“abyss mother” is at once a gate (or passage) and a “root”. The Greek
goddess Artemis was both. She was the guardian of the portals, and was
herself the portals; she was the giver of the mugwort (the Chinese knew
it), and was herself the mugwort (Artemisia), as Dr. Rendel Harris has
shown. [490] She opened the gate of birth as the goddess of birth, her
“key” being the mugwort, and she opened the portal of death as the
goddess of death. As the goddess of riches she guarded the door of the
treasure-house, and she possessed the “philosopher’s stone”, which
transmuted base metals into gold. Artemis was a form of the Egyptian
Hathor, Aphrodite being another specialized form. Hathor was associated
with the lotus and other water plants, and was Nub, the lady of gold,
who gave her name to Nubia; she was the goddess of miners, and
therefore of the Sinaitic peninsula; she was the “gate” of birth and
death. The monumental gateways of Egypt, India, China, and Japan appear
to have been originally goddess portals. [491]
The goddess of the early prospectors and miners was, as has been said,
a water-goddess. In the writings of Lao Tze, his female and active Tao,
“the Mother of all Things”, is closely associated with water. The
chapter entitled “The Placid and Contented Nature” refers to water, and
water as “an illustration of the way of the Tao, is”, Dr. Legge
comments, “repeatedly employed by Lao Tze”.
“The highest excellence is like (that of) water. The excellence of
water appears in its benefiting all things.” [492]
Lao Tze, dealing with “The Attribute of Humility”, connects “water”
with “women”:
“What makes a great state is its being (like a low-lying
down-flowing stream); it becomes the centre to which tend (all the
small states) under heaven.
“(To illustrate from) the case of all females:—the female always
overcomes the male by her stillness.” [493]
Water is soft, but it wears down the rocks.
“The softest thing in the world dashes against and overcomes the
hardest; that which has no (substantial) existence enters where
there is no crevice.” [494]
The Tao acts like water, and (The Tao) “which originated all under the
sky is”, Lao Tze says, “to be considered as the mother of all of them.
When the mother is found, we know what her children should be.” [495]
A passage which has puzzled commentators is,
“Great, it (the Tao) passes on (in constant flow). Passing on, it
becomes remote. Having become remote, it returns. Therefore the Tao
is great.” [496]
The reference may be to the circle of water which surrounds the world.
It is possible Lao Tze had it in mind, seeing that he so often compares
the action of the Tao to that of water—the Tao that produces and
nourishes “by its outflowing operation”.
Like “soul substance”, the Tao is found in all things that live, and in
all things that exercise an influence on life. The Tao is the absolute,
or, as the Brahmanic sages declared, the “It” which cannot be seen—the
“It” in the fruit of the tree, the “It” in man. Lao Tze refers to the
“It” as the “One”.
In his chapter, “The Origin of the Law”, he writes:
The things which from of old have got the One (the Tao) are:
Heaven, which by it is bright and pure;
Earth endowed thereby firm and sure;
Spirits with powers by it supplied;
Valleys kept full throughout their void;
All creatures which through it do live;
Princes and Kings who from it get
The model which to all they give. [497]
The Tao may produce and nourish all things and bring them to maturity,
but it “exercises no control over them”. [498]
Man must begin by taking control of himself: he must make use of the
light that is within him. The wise man “does not dare to act” of his
accord. When he has acted so that he reaches a state of inaction, the
Tao will then drift him into a state of perfection. He must guard the
mother (Tao) in himself by attending to the breath. “The management of
the breath,” says Dr. Legge, “is the mystery of the esoteric Buddhism
and Taoism.” [499] “When one knows,” Tao Tze has written, “that he is
his mother’s child, and proceeds to guard (the qualities of) the mother
that belongs to him, to the end of his life he will be free from peril.
Let him keep his mouth closed, and shut up the portals (of his
nostrils), and all his life he will be exempt from laborious exertion.”
[500]
By giving “undivided attention to the breath” (the vital breath), and
bringing it “to the utmost degree of pliancy”, he “can become as a
(tender) babe. When he has cleansed away the most mysterious sights (of
his imagination), he can become without a flaw.” [501]
The doctrine of Inaction pervades the teaching of Lao Tze, which is
quite fatalistic. Salvation depends on the individual and the state
allowing the Tao to “flow” freely.
“If the Empire is governed according to Tao, evil spirits will not
be worshipped as good ones.
“If evil spirits are not worshipped as good ones, good ones will do
no injury. Neither will the Sages injure the people. Each one will
not injure the other. And if neither injures the other, there will
be mutual profit.”
A native commentator writes in this connection:
“Spirits do not hurt the natural. If people are natural, spirits
have no means of manifesting themselves, and if spirits do not
manifest themselves, we are not conscious of their existence as
such. Likewise, if we are not conscious of the existence of spirits
as such, we must be equally unconscious of the existence of
inspired teachers as such; and to be unconscious of the existence
of spirits and of inspired teachers is the very essence of Tao.”
[502]
The scholarly sage thus reached the conclusion that it is a blessed
thing to know nothing, to be ignorant. Good order is necessary for the
workings of the Tao, and good order is secured by abstinence from
action, and by keeping the people in a state of simplicity and
ignorance, so that they may be restful and child-like in their
unquestioning and complete submission to the Tao. “The state of
vacancy,” says Lao Tze, “should be brought to the utmost degree....
When things (in the vegetable world) have displayed their luxuriant
growth, we see each of them return to its root. This returning to their
root is what we call the state of stillness.” [503]
There would be no virtues if there were no vices, no robberies if there
were no wealth.
“If,” the Taoists argued, “we would renounce our sageness and discard
our wisdom, it would be better for the people a hundredfold. If we
could renounce our benevolence and discard our rightness, the people
would again become filial and kindly. If we could renounce our artful
contrivances and discard our scheming for gain, there would be no
thieves and robberies.” [504]
Here we meet with the doctrine of the World’s Ages, already referred
to. Men were perfect to begin with, because, as Lao Tze says, “they did
not know they were ruled”. “In the age of perfect virtue,” Kwang Tze
writes, “they attached no value to wisdom.... They were upright and
correct, without knowing that to be so was righteousness; they loved
one another, without knowing that to do so was benevolence; they were
honest and leal-hearted without knowing that it was loyalty; they
fulfilled their engagements, without knowing that to do so was good
faith; in their simple movements they employed the services of one
another, without thinking that they were conferring or receiving any
gift. Therefore their actions left no trace, and there was no record of
their affairs.”
To this state of perfection, Lao Tze wished his fellow-countrymen to
return.
That the idea of the Tao originated among those who went far and wide,
searching for the elixir of life, is suggested by Lao Tze’s chapter,
“The Value Set on Life”. He refers to those “whose movements tend to
the land (or place) of death”, and asks, “For what reason?” The answer
is, “Because of their excessive endeavours to perpetuate life”.
He continues:
“But I have heard that he who is skilful in managing the life
entrusted to him for a time travels on the land without having to
shun rhinoceros or tiger, and enters a host without having to avoid
buff coat or sharp weapon. The rhinoceros finds no place in him
into which to thrust its horn, nor the tiger a place in which to
fix its claws, nor the weapon a place to admit its point. And for
what reason? Because there is in him no place of death.” [505]
It would appear that Lao Tze was acquainted not only with more ancient
writers regarding the Tao, but with traditions regarding heroes
resembling Achilles, Siegfried, and Diarmid, whose bodies had been
rendered invulnerable by dragon’s blood, or the water of a river in the
Otherworld; or, seeing that each of these heroes had a spot which was a
“place of death”, with traditions regarding heroes who, like El Kedir,
plunged in the “Well of Life” and became immortals, whose bodies could
not be injured by man or beast. The El Kedirs of western Asia and
Europe figure in legends as “Wandering Jews” or invulnerable heroes,
including those who, like Diarmid, found the “Well of Life”, and those
who had knowledge of charms that rendered them invisible or protected
them against wounds. The Far Eastern stories regarding the inhabitants
of the “Islands of the Blest”, related in a previous chapter, may be
recalled in this connection. Having drunk the waters of the “Well of
Life” and eaten of the “fungus of immortality”, they were rendered
immune to poisons, and found it impossible to injure themselves. When,
therefore, we find Lao Tze referring to men who had no reason to fear
armed warriors or beasts of prey, it seems reasonable to conclude that
these were men who had found and partaken of the elixir of life, or had
accumulated “stores of vitality” by practising breathing exercises and
drinking charmed water, or by acquiring “merit”, like the Indian
ascetics who concentrated their thoughts on Brahma (neuter).
In the chapter, “Returning to the Root”, in his Tao Teh King, Lao Tze
appears to regard the Tao as a preservative against death. He who in
“the state of vacancy” returns to primeval simplicity and perfectness
achieves longevity through the workings of the Tao.
“Possessed of the Tao, he endures long; and to the end of his
bodily life is exempt from all danger of decay.” [506]
Here the Tao acts like the magic water that restores youth. It is “soul
substance”, and is required by the Chinese gods as Idun’s apples are
required by the Norse gods. Says Lao Tze:
“Spirits of the dead receiving It (Tao) become divine; the very
gods themselves owe their divinity to its influence; and by It both
heaven and earth were produced”. [507]
There were floating traditions in China in Lao Tze’s time regarding men
who had lived for hundreds of years. One was “the patriarch Phăng”, who
is referred to by Confucius [508] as “our old Phăng”. It was told that
“at the end of the Shang Dynasty (1123 B.C.) he was more than 767 years
old, and still in unabated vigour”. We read that during his lifetime he
lost forty-nine wives and fifty-four sons; and that, after living for
about 1500 years, he died and left two sons, Wu and I, who “gave their
names to the Wu-i or Bu-i Hills, from which we get our Bohea tea”.
[509]
Kwang Tze refers to Phăng. But instead of telling that he had
discovered and partaken of the elixir of life, as he must have done in
the original story, he says that he “got It (the Tao), and lived on
from the time of the lord Yu to that of the five chiefs”. [510]
Others who got It (the Tao) in like manner were, according to Kwang
Tze, the prehistoric Shih-wei who “adjusted heaven and earth”, Fu-hsi
who “by It penetrated to the mystery of the maternity of the primary
matter”, the sage Hwang-Ti who “by It ascended the cloudy sky”, Fu
Yueh, chief minister of Wu-ting (1324–1264 B.C.), who got It and after
death mounted to the Eastern portion of the Milky Way, where, riding on
Sagittarius and Scorpio, he took his place among the stars. Various
spirits “imbibed” It likewise and owed their power and attributes to It
(the Tao). [511]
Kwang Tze tells that a man once addressed a Taoist sage, saying, “You
are old, sir, while your complexion is like that of a child; how is it
so?”
The reply was, “I have become acquainted with the Tao”. [512]
Here the Tao is undoubtedly regarded as the elixir of life—as “soul
substance” that renews youth and promotes longevity. It was not,
however, a thing to eat and drink—the “plant of life” or “the water of
life”—but an influence obtained like the spiritual power, the “merit”,
accumulated by the Brahmanic hermits of India who practised “yogi”. As
the mystery of creation was repeated at birth when a new soul came into
existence, so did the Tao create new life when the devotee reached the
desired state of complete and unquestioning submission to its workings.
There were some Taoists who, like the Brahmanic hermits, sought refuge
in solitary places and endeavoured to promote longevity by management
of the breath, adopting what Mr. Balfour has called a “system of mystic
and recondite calisthenics”. As we have seen, Lao Tze makes reference
to “breathing exercises”, but apparently certain of his followers
regarded the performance of these exercises as the sum and substance of
his teachings, whereas they were but an aid towards attaining the state
of mind which prepared the Taoist for submission to the Tao. Kwang Tze
found it necessary to condemn the practices of those “scholars” who,
instead of pursuing “the path of self cultivation”, endeavoured to
accumulate “the breath of life” so that they might live as long as the
patriarch Phăng. In his chapter, “Ingrained Ideas”, he writes:
“Blowing and breathing with open mouth; inhaling and exhaling the
breath; expelling the old breath and taking in new; passing their
time like the (dormant) bear, and stretching and twisting (the
neck) like a bird; all this simply shows the desire for longevity”.
[513]
The genuine devotees “enjoy their ease without resorting to the rivers
and seas”, they “attain to longevity without the management (of the
breath)”, they “forget all things and yet possess all things by
cultivating the qualities of placidity, indifference, silence,
quietude, absolute vacancy and non-action”. These qualities “are the
substance of the Tao and its characteristics”. [514]
It seems undoubted, however, that the system of Lao Tze, whereby
“spiritual fluid” flowed into the placid, receptive mind, originated in
the very practices here condemned—in the quest of “soul substance”
contained in water, herbs, metals, and gems. As Indian and Chinese
sages retired to solitudes and endured great privations, so that they
might accumulate “merit”, so did the searchers for herbs, metals, and
gems penetrate desert wastes and cross trackless mountains, so as to
accumulate the wealth which was “merit” to them. They were inspired in
like manner by genuine religious enthusiasm.
The Taoists never forgot the “Elixir”. Taoism began with the quest of
that elusive and mystical “It” which renewed youth and ensured
immortality, or prolonged longevity after death, and the later Taoists
revived or, perhaps one should say, perpetuated the search for “the
Water of Life”, and the “Plant of Life”, the “Peach of 3000 years”, or
“10,000 years”, the gem trees, gold, pearls, jade, &c. The fear of
death obsessed their minds. They wished to live as long as the
Patriarch Phăng on this earth, or to be transferred bodily to the
Paradise of the West, the Paradise of Cloudland or Star-land, or that
of the “Islands of the Blest”. Besides, it was necessary that the
earthly life should be prolonged so that they might make complete
submission to the Tao. Their lives had to be passed in tranquillity;
they were not to reflect on the past or feel anxiety regarding the
future. The fear of death in the future tended to disturb their peace
of mind, and they were therefore in need of water which, like the water
of Lethe, would make them forget their cares, or some other elixir that
would inspire them with confidence and give them strength. Kwang Tze
might censure the ascetics for confusing “the means” with “the end”,
but ordinary men have always been prone to attach undue importance to
ceremonies and rites—to concentrate their thoughts on the performance
of rites rather than in accumulating “merit”, and to believe that
“merit” can be accumulated by the performance of the rites alone.
The explanation of the state of affairs censured by Kwang Tze seems to
be that the transcendental teachings of Lao Tze and himself, in which
the vague idea of the Logos was fused with belief in a vague elixir of
life, were incomprehensible not only to the masses but even to
scholars, and that the practices and beliefs of the older faith on
which Lao Tze founded his system were perpetuated by custom and
tradition by other adherents to the cult of which he was a teacher.
Ordinary men, who were not by temperament or mental constitution or
training either mystics or metaphysicians, required something more
concrete than the elusive Tao of Lao and Kwang; they clung to their
beliefs in the efficacy of life-prolonging herbs, jewels, metals,
coloured stones, water, fresh air, &c. Withal, they required something
to worship, having always been accustomed to perform religious
ceremonies and offer up sacrifices. They could not worship or sacrifice
to an abstraction like the Tao. Nor could they grasp the idea of an
impersonal God as expressed in the writings of Kwang Tze, who taught:
“God is a principle which exists by virtue of its own
intrinsicality, and operates spontaneously without
self-manifestation”.
The people clung to their belief in a personal God, or personal gods
including dragon-gods, and when the old deities believed in by their
ancestors were discredited by their teachers, they deified Lao Tze and
his disciples as the Indians deified Buddha and the Rishis. Lao Tze was
sacrificed to in the second century B.C., and a superb temple was
erected to him. One of the Emperors who embraced the Taoist faith
caused the statue of Lao Tze to be carried into his palace, with pomp
and ceremony. The ordinary priests in the temples of China were called
Taoists.
When Buddhism began to exercise an influence in China between the third
century B.C. and the first century A.D., the Taoists borrowed from the
Buddhists, while the Buddhists, in turn, borrowed from the Taoists. The
myth then arose that when Lao Tze “went west”, he was reborn in India
as the Buddha. But the Taoists clung also to the older myth that after
Lao Tze died, he ascended to Cloudland and became the personal god of
heaven, Shang Ti, the Supreme and Divine Emperor. It was as Shang Ti, a
term which includes the spirits of deceased Emperors of China, he was
worshipped not only in temples but at domestic shrines, along with the
various groups of demi-gods, some of whom were identified with the
disciples of Lao Tze. The Chinese Shang Ti, like the ancient Egyptian
sun-god Ra and the Babylonian Marduk (Merodach), was the divine father
of the living monarch.