Tag: TAOISM

Continuing with the ‘sublime’ in the I Ching, according to commentaries (perhaps by Confucius or his followers) sublime success applies to the two basic kinds of people: the leader and the follower. The great leader (including the sage) is represented by Ch’ien or the dragon. Sublime success here depends on self-improvement, humility, truthfulness, accessibility, perseverance, and efforts harmonized with nature wherein “the whole cosmos [is] brought into unison.”²⁰ Alternatively, the follower is represented by K’un or earth where sublime success requires breadth of character, relation to the world, fulfillment of duty, furthering of all creatures, modesty, inner beauty, self-control, influence through reason, and constancy. These states of Ch’ien and K’un or leader and follower can be transposable in each individual and thus paradoxically, “everlasting steadfastness in greatness.”²¹ However it is worth added emphasis: all sublime success depends on conformity of personal behavior with the laws of nature.

One last concept we extract from Wilhelm is the value of the I Ching as a focus of meditation. Consider the following:

“Therefore it is the order of the Changes that the superior man devotes himself to and he attains tranquility by. It is the judgments on the individual lines that the superior man takes pleasure in and the he ponders on.”²²

Or

“The Book of Changes contains the measure of heaven and earth; therefore it enables us to comprehend the tao of heaven and earth and its order…Looking upward, we contemplate with its help the signs in the heavens; looking down, we examine the lines of the earth. Thus we come to know the circumstances of the dark and the light. Going back to the beginnings of things and pursuing them to the end, we come to know the lessons of birth and death…Since in this way man comes to resemble heaven and earth, he is not in conflict with them. His wisdom enables all things, and his tao brings order into the world…”²³

Wilhelm names five hexagrams on which meditation offers perhaps the greatest value for supreme success: ‘Inner truth” (#61), ‘Limitation” (#60 – self-communion and silence), ‘Preponderance of the Great’ (# 28 – caution), ‘Deliverance’ (#40 – magnanimity and forbearance), and ‘Modesty’ (# 15). The message here is clear, the I Ching is a guide for speech and action and a source of foresight and prudence – in short, a book of wisdom.

(final continuation next post)

———————————————

²⁰Wilhelm, Hellmut, Change – Eight Lectures on the I Ching. Princeton University Press, Princeton New Jersey, 1973. ISBN 0-691-01787-5, page 57.

²¹Ibid., page 65.

²²Ibid., page 68.

²³Ibid., page 69.

—————————————–

Having trouble leaving a question or comment?  E-mail me at gregoryciliberti@gmail.com

The I Ching teaches there are two kinds of change: alternation and transformation. This duality is explained by a second kind of polarity – motion and rest – each of which manifests in the two forces: yang or ‘firm’(the Creative) represented by the unbroken line,  and yin or ‘yielding’ (the Receptive) represented by the broken line.¹²

“In a state of rest, the Creative is one, and in a state of motion it is straight; therefore it creates that which is great. The Receptive is closed in a state of rest, and in a state of motion it opens; therefore it creates that which is vast.”¹³

Alternatively, the firm line has unity for its quality, is one-dimensional, and is the image of the human mind while the yielding line shows vegetative movement and is the symbol of the human soul.

In any case, alternation is the change which occurs when the two forces are at rest while transformation occurs when there is motion. On the one hand motion in the unbroken line is an outward pushing by which it becomes thinner in the middle and breaks into two. On the other hand motion in the broken line is an inward pushing that forms an undivided line. The symbolism is clear; in any circumstance, transformation or reversal can occur adding novel or unexpected elements to the situation.¹⁴

Wilhelm tells us:

“…this principle of reversal of qualities also contains a maxim for action…which takes us a step further than the mere possibility of conformity in our actions… an unresisting acceptance of developments, sweeps one into the current of events from which escape is no longer possible. Only by taking up a counterposition, by confronting events with live awareness can developments be guided into the desired paths.”¹⁵

Wilhelm next offers a somewhat detailed discussion of specific hexagrams and their attendant commentary that goes beyond the scope of this site. However some concepts he discusses expand our understanding of ultimate reality in the I Ching. First it projects a mathematical order on the universe within which the hexagrams inform a kind of mystical periodic table. Second, cosmic order in the I Ching is analogous to music as exhibited by the harmony of the hexagrams and the unfolding of symphonic-like themes and variations which humans appreciate when they seek the perfection of these expressions within the natural world.¹⁶

Thirdm we learn the pinnacle of reality in the I Ching is the ‘sublime.’ From the Judgment or Tuan text, the first quality of heaven in its cyclic movement is yüan or the ‘sublime beginning.’ Combined with heng or pushing through to success, li or utility, and chen or perseverance, the cycle of creativity develops and coordinates with cosmic and human activity uniting all in ‘sublime success’ which includes beauty and justice.¹⁷ Wilhelm provides two quotations:

“Great indeed is the sublimity of the Creative, to which all things owe their beginning and which permeates heaven.”¹⁸

“Of all that is good, sublimity is supreme. Succeeding is the coming together of all that is beautiful. Furtherance is the agreement of all that is just. Perseverance is the foundation of all actions.”¹⁹

(third continuation next post)

———————————————

¹²Wilhelm, Hellmut, Change – Eight Lectures on the I Ching. Princeton University Press, Princeton New Jersey, 1973. ISBN 0-691-01787-5, page 33.

¹³Ibid.

¹⁴Ibid.

¹⁵Ibid., page 34.

¹⁶Ibid., pages 48-49.

¹⁷Ibid., page 51.

¹⁸Ibid.

¹⁹Ibid.

—————————————–

Having trouble leaving a question or comment?  E-mail me at gregoryciliberti@gmail.com

But the constancy of change – “change that is unchangeable”⁶ – affords a kind of security in the assurance that events are unfolding in the right direction. Wilhelm uses the example of social relations: consider how the son’s deference to his father is reiterated later in his own son’s respect for him. Natural change then is not chaotic, but analogous to the human virtue of reliability. And one’s understanding of the change or tao of heaven and earth allows one to resemble them and avoid conflict with them.

Instantiated in this tao is a duality; consistency is all-inclusive applying to the great (macrocosm) and the small (microcosm), i.e both the cosmos and the indivifual person. Human centrality in the world places us on a kind of par with cosmic forces allowing us to influence events as long as we proceed in the direction of change, not against it. Consequently we can master our own fate and impact affairs beyond us as long as we stay within natural limits.⁷ In fact, applying reflective consciousness and abstract thinking to that which is constant in the flux of nature and life provides the first guarantee of meaningful action and with it, responsiblity.⁸

A second duality is that of polarity, meaning two antithetical points which set limits on cycles of change, such as yin and yang or above and below. Such polarities imply not rigidity nor even a pole round which cyclic movements turn, but something akin to a “magnetic field” or inter-relationship which evokes change. The two most important of these are Ch’ien (the Creative, heaven, energy, bright, yang) and K’un (the Receptive, earth, form, dark, yin).⁹ Wilhelm quotes the Great Commentary twice:

“The Creative and the Receptive are the real secret of the Changes. Inasmuch as the Creative and the Receptive present themselves as complete, the changes between them are posited. If the Creative and the Receptive were destroyed, there would be nothing by which the changes could be perceived. If there were no more changes to be seen, the effects of the Creative and the Receptive would also gradually cease.”¹⁰

And,

^“The Master said: The Creative and the Receptive are indeed the gateway to the Changes. The Creative is the representation of light things and the Receptive of dark things. In that the natures of the dark and the light are joined, the firm and the yielding receive form. Thus do the relationships of heaven and earth take shape, and we enter into relation with the nature of the light of the gods.”¹¹

(further continued next post)

———————————————

⁶Wilhelm, Hellmut, Change – Eight Lectures on the I Ching. Princeton University Press, Princeton New Jersey, 1973. ISBN 0-691-01787-5, page 20.

⁷Ibid., pages 20-22.

⁸Ibid., page 23.

⁹Ibid., page 27-28.

¹⁰Ibid., page 29.

¹¹Ibid., page 31.

—————————————–

Having trouble leaving a question or comment?  E-mail me at gregoryciliberti@gmail.com

“…The Book of Changes represented the gate to the whole man and to the whole world.” – Hellmut Wilhelm¹

The I Ching (AKA the Yi jing or the Zhou-Yi, the Changes of Zhou) was both originally a divination manual (akin to Tarot cards in the West) and “almost the only important work of metaphysics”² in early Chinese history. Its earliest origin goes back to Fu Hsi (or Fu Xi – his dates 2852-2737 B.C.E.), a legendary emperor, who invented the eight Kua or mystic triagrams that symbolize the laws and elements of nature. Each Kua consists of 3 lines, either continuous, representing yang (male, positive, active, productive, celestial, light, heat, life) or broken representing yin (female, negative, passive, earthy, dark, cold, death). From this earliest framework, we infer a metaphysics based on a mystical dualism of opposites resting upon a foundation of naturalism.

Some 1700 years later the original Book of Changes was composed by the imprisoned Ji Ch’ang (later the founding monarch of the Zhou or Chou dynasty circa 1027 B.C.E., and thus also known as King Wen). He stacked each triagram on top of itself and on top of each of the other triagrams to create 64 hexagrams (hsiangs) that further amplified the laws underpinning nature. His son. Ji Dan (Chi Tan) refined these and composed initial statements. Later thinkers, possibly including Confucius, wrote commentaries (e.g. the “Ten Wings”) based on their study of the hexagrams, thereby converting the text from a tool of prognostication into philosophy. It reached its ‘final’ canonical form under the title Yi Jing in 136 B.C.E.

Philosophically, the I Ching offers at the most basic level both a model of the cosmos and a guide to the relations of human beings with respect to the continuous change within reality and the universal interplay of opposing natural forces – yin and yang.³ As such, it can be integrated into ethics and politics (Confucianism) or cosmology and metaphysics (Taosim). It is not inherently dark, mysterious, or abstruse, rather “the easy, the simple, the naturally given.”⁴ That is to say, everyone empirically recognizes the fundamental principle of reality is continuous change, especially movement that returns to its starting point such as day and night, the seasons, the cycle of birth and death, and so forth.

But change in the I Ching references not any and all movement as its opposite is not rest or absence of motion, but instead reverse movement  – i.e regression, life’s reversal, it’s perversion. Critically, change is not an external force, but an inner tendency to natural and spontaneous development. It is also multidimensional. In the end, humans do best to acquiesce to the changes of natural movement and growth and ride it at the individual and societal levels.

Hellmut Wilhelm tells us how this is metaphysically possible:

“The fact that the movement returns to its starting point keeps it from dispersing, which movement in one dimension only cannot prevent. The infinite is thus brought within the confines of the finite, where alone it can be of service to man.”⁵

(continued next post)

———————————————

¹Wilhelm, Hellmut, Change – Eight Lectures on the I Ching. Princeton University Press, Princeton New Jersey, 1973. ISBN 0-691-01787-5, page ix. Wilhelm was one of a group of German-speaking ex-patriots living in Peking during the Japanese occupation. He made 8 lectures on the I Ching to other exiles at the home of Wilhelm Haas at Haas’s suggestion in the winter of 1943.

²Durant, Will, Our Oriental Heritage. Simon and Schuster, New York, 1963. ISBN0-671-54800-X, page 650. It is this second understanding of the text we are addressing here.

³McGreal, Ian P. (editor) Great Thinkers of the Eastern World. HarperCollinsPublishers, New York, 1995. ISBN 0-06-270085-5, page 60.

⁴Wilhelm, Hellmut, Change – Eight Lectures on the I Ching. Princeton University Press, Princeton New Jersey, 1973. ISBN 0-691-01787-5, page 16.

⁵Ibid., page 20.

—————————————–

Having trouble leaving a question or comment?  E-mail me at gregoryciliberti@gmail.com

“These peoples are superior to all other Asiatics in antiquity, art, intellect, wisdom, policy, and in their taste for philosophy…” – Diderot¹

Chinese political and intellectual history is both ancient and complex.² An advanced civilization developed in China at least 5000 years ago, although written records date back only to about 1500 B.C.E. Ultimate reality was viewed initially, as in most cultures, as a confusion of superstition, magic, polytheism, and ritual.

Following the fall of the Zhou (Chou) emperor in the 8^th century B.C.E., a period of squabbling feudal lords brought about sustained political instability into which were born China’s two greatest philosophers: the sixth century B.C.E. rough contemporaries – Confucius and Laozi. They offered alternate philosophical approaches to individual endurance and societal resolution of the volatile conditions existing in their time.

The better known, Confucius, was mainly a philosopher of ethics and politics. Adversity and instability could be overcome by means of individual moral behavior and virtuous governance. His humanist teachings were recorded by his students in the classic, Analects of Confucius.³ Later followers, especially Mencius, honed his teachings into a system that endured as government-sanctioned doctrine and policy into the twentieth century. Confucianism remained mostly silent on ultimate reality until it merged with Taoism and Buddhism much later to form NeoConfucianism.

Meanwhile, Laozi (previously Lao Tzu) was primarily a spiritual thinker, who blended a natural metaphysics with mystical experience to inform a kind of wisdom ethics centered on the value of quietism and wu-wei or effortless action. His only written work – and even that of apocryphal origin –  is the very short Daodejing (historically called the Tao Te Ching). His greatest follower, Zhuangzi (previously Chuang Tzu), developed Laozi’s obscure teachings into poetic lessons more accessible to the ordinary person. Taoism had a mixed history, sometimes regional and practiced secretly when out of favor and other times state-sponsored by rulers who suppressed Confucianism and Buddhism. With the advent of the NeoConfucian amalgam, many of its metaphysical principles were accepted throughout China.

(For more interested readers, I have posted a page in the appendix with a simplified chronology of Chinese political and intellectual history.²)

—————————————

¹Quoted by Will Durant in Our Oriental Heritage, page 639. Diderot is referring to the Chinese.

²See page titled Chronology of Chinese Political and Intellectual History in the appendix on this site: http://philosophicalguidance.com/chronology-of-chinese-political-and-intellectual-history/.

³See post titled Societal Duty – Part I dated 12/21/2018 on this site.

—————————————–

Having trouble leaving a question or comment?  E-mail me at gregoryciliberti@gmail.com

“Taoism is a religion as well as a philosophy.” – Werner Eichorn¹

We move now to China with its three main ancient religious or philosophical traditions: Confucianism, Taoism², and Buddhism. Confucius and his immediate followers were dubious of speculation on ultimate reality and God, believing that it was challenging enough to develop philosophies of human ethics and proper governance – thus they offer little for our use here. Meanwhile Buddhism originated in India and will be discussed separately in the next section. Taoism alone is both original to China and deeply concerned with ultimate reality and is thus the focus of this section.

However it is important to note that there is tremendous overlap over time in Chinese philosophy and thought. For example both Confucianism and Taoism were influenced by the earlier I-Ching and yin/yang doctrine so we will need to factor them into our evaluation. Moreover, it turns out that later in Chinese history the principles of Taoism were integrated with Confucianism (and to some extent Buddhism) under the rubric of NeoConfucianism. The reader will need to forgive me as I exercise the author’s prerogative to arbitrarily discuss all of these pieces under the general category of Taoism.³

A preliminary outline of this section follows:

1. Introduction
2. Historical Perspective
3. The I-Ching
4. Laozi (Lao Tzu)
5. Zhuangzi (Chuang Tzu)
6. Liezi (Lieh Tzu)
7. Guo Xiang (Kuo Hsiang)
8. Taoist Deities
9. NeoConfucianism
10. Modern Presentations
11. Synopsis and Synthesis

After this brief introduction, we will peruse the complex history surrounding Taoism in the setting of Chinese political and intellectual history. Next we will examine the I-Ching which offers an early model of ultimate reality that influenced later thinkers. Then we arrive at the core of this section; discussions on the Daodejing (known historically as the Tao Te Ching) by Laozi and the work of his follower Zhuangzi. We will add more depth with brief looks at Liezi, the third great ancient Taoist, and Guo Xiang, a later thinker.  As we move forward in time we come to deification of the Tao and Huainanzi’s cosmology of the unfolding of the Tao. Thereafter we will examine briefly the integrated Chinese philosophy or religion known as NeoConfucianism which appeared in the 8^th century and lasted until modern times. Finally we will look at a few contemporary presentations of Taoism for modern living. We close, as always, with a summary and synthesis.

As with the Judaism and Hinduism, our emphasis will be on ultimate reality and human participation with it as opposed to religious dogma and ritual. Join me next time as we begin with the historical perspective on the origins and development of Taoism.

—————————————–

¹From Encylcopedia of the World’s Religions edited by R.C. Zaehner, page 374.

²Any writer on Chinese philosophy and religion is faced with issues of spelling, and I am no different. The current accepted spelling of ‘Taoism’ is actually ‘Daoism.’ While I will try to use modern spelling for most of this section, I prefer the older “Taoism’ for the overall subject due to its general familiarity in the West and use in many of my mostly older and even some recent sources.

³As with Hinduism, I ask for a degree of leniency from Taoist practitioners and scholars. My resources are somewhat limited and I do not claim any particular expertise in this area. My objective is only to extract the key aspects of ultimate reality found in this tradition for comparison with other religions, Western philosophy, and science. As always I am open to criticism and corrections from more knowledgeable readers and sincerely seek your comments.

—————————————–

Having trouble leaving a question or comment. E-mail me at gregoryciliberti@gmail.com

The last of the three famous Milesian philosophers was a student of Anaximander known as Anaximenes (circa 586-526 B.C.E.). He incorporates the oneness and infinity of his predecessors with a definite material principle, air, the elusive and the invisible. The constituents of the world differ in their nature by rarity and density; the finest is fire, the most dense is stone. He is the first thinker to recognize that qualitative differences reduce to differences in quantity; i.e. there is no separation. Change is due to eternal motion. Thus infinite air is God and the principle form which all things are becoming. Aetius summarizes his philosophy elegantly, “…air is the principle of existing things; for from it all things come-to-be and into it they are again dissolved. As our soul, he says, being air holds us together and controls us, so does the wind and air enclose the whole world.”²

What I find most fascinating about the Milesians is their attempt to define a fundamental explanation of reality based on only inchoate or primitive science. They astutely reflect on their experience of the world to extract and propose limited, but scientific explanations. They also are the first to Western thinkers to acknowledge the real world as the only world, while positing a primeval ‘substance’ or ‘principle’ as its origin. Their theory of God is a more sophisticated concept than we expect of their epoch – no longer taking human form, but a more abstract and expansive configuration. Thales appears to be the first recorded pantheist, and his thinking anticipates the idea of the universe as organism as developed by Alfred North Whitehead. Anaximander’s ‘indefinite’ seems remarkably similar to the modern concept of the quantum flux of modern physics. Anaximenes air seems to me to be the quantum void or perhaps space which sets up the intriguing possibility that his infinity might be time creating the earliest notion of Einstein’s space-time.

Next we will see how the later Greek atomists built on the thoughts of the Milesians to arrive at a prophetically modern view of ultimate reality. Join me then.

Harlow Shapley, we have seen, considers ultimate reality as five fundamental constituents of the universe – space, time, matter, energy, and cosmic evolution. He assures us that this latter term can explain the appearance of ‘protoplasmic life’ via a long chain from ‘mystical hydrogen’ without the need for supernatural forces or divine miracles. It is true that through cosmic evolution humans appear with an advanced brain that permits us to seek distant goals beyond individual fate, but social insects duplicate some of our mores, and life elsewhere may be more ‘perfect’ than Homo sapiens.

He then asks; “Where and why does religion come into the cosmic picture?”⁵ Referencing anthropology he notes that all human societies have religion of some sort usually to explain the logically unexplainable often with magic or an appeal to spirits. He asks us to advance our distant goals by appealing not to our animal origins, but the angelic or spiritual “in the broadest sense,” that is, by adopting a ‘religious attitude.’ He proffers a modification of Albert Schweitzer’s religion as the ‘reverence of life.’

“To me it is a religious attitude to recognize the wonder of the whole natural world, not only of life… why not go all the way and avow reverence for all things that exist, all that is touched by cosmic evolution, and reserve the greatest reverence of all for existence itself”⁶

But reverence alone may not be enough, Hapley cautions, our creed should be “effective participation in universal evolution.” ⁷

“Would we be true to the galaxies and the stars, to the vegetation and animals, all of which evolve, if we willfully refused to participate?” ⁸

At last he brings us back to the domain of human action,

“It is a magnificent universe of incredibly glorious space, time, and energy. Let us go proudly along! Our social and spiritual evolution appears to be in our own hands; it does not await the slow flow or vast amounts of time, such as our bodies would require for a significant step in evolution.”⁹

Analogous to the fundamental entities of the universe are perhaps five fundamental entities in the cosmopolis of humanity – respect for human life, humility, charity and altruism, reverence for the grand phenomena of existence, and growth in knowledge and spirit. He thinks these parameters lead us to a lifetime of service, world citizenship, world-mindedness, a human bill of rights, and respect for the individual.¹⁰

Mr. Shapley’s metamorphosis is complete – no longer mere astronomer, he is both philosopher and theologian. His distillation of key facets of the universe as ultimate reality and his principle of ethics as cosmic are as cogent as any I have encountered.  Full stop.

——————————————————-

⁵Shapley, Harlow, Beyond the Observatory. Charles Scribner’s Sons, New York, NY, 1967. Page 121.

⁶Ibid., page 123.

⁷Ibid., page 171.

⁸Ibid., page 172.

⁹Ibid., pages 172-173

¹⁰Ibid., pages 173-178.