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polarity is the principle that + and —, north and south, are different aspects of one and the same system, and that the disappearance of either one of them would be the disappearance of the system.

1 Lao-tzu 47, tr. auct. The number in brackets refers to the page on which this quotation is reproduced in Chinese calligraphy. The letter a identifies this quotation on that page. A note on p. 105 below explains the arrangement of the calligraphy, which appears on pp. 56–73 and 99–104.

People who have been brought up in the aura of Christian and Hebrew aspirations find this frustrating, because it seems to deny any possibility of progress, an ideal which flows from their linear (as distinct from cyclic) view of time and history. Indeed, the whole enterprise of Western technology is “to make the world a better place”—to have pleasure without pain, wealth without poverty, and health without sickness. But, as is now becoming obvious, our violent efforts to achieve this ideal with such weapons as DDT, penicillin, nuclear energy, automotive transportation, computers, industrial farming, damming, and compelling everyone, by law, to be superficially “good and healthy” are creating more problems than they solve. We have been interfering with a complex system of relationships which we do not understand, and the more we study its details, the more it eludes us by revealing still more details to study. As we try to comprehend and control the world it runs away from us. Instead of chafing at this situation, a Taoist would ask what it means. What is that which always retreats when pursued? Answer: yourself. Idealists (in the moral sense of the word) regard the universe as different and separate from themselves—that is, as a system of external objects which needs to be subjugated. Taoists view the universe as the same as, or inseparable from, themselves—so that Lao-tzu could say, “Without leaving my house, I know the whole universe.” [104a]1 This implies that the art of life is more like navigation than warfare, for what is important is to understand the winds, the tides, the currents, the seasons, and the principles of growth and decay, so that one’s actions may use them and not fight them. In this sense, the Taoist attitude is not opposed to technology per se. Indeed, the Chuang-tzu writings are full of references to crafts and skills perfected by this very principle of “going with the grain.” The point is therefore that technology is destructive only in the hands of people who do not realize that they are one and the same process as the universe. Our overspecialization in conscious attention and linear thinking has led to neglect, or ignore-ance, of the basic principles and rhythms of this process, of which the foremost is polarity.

In Chinese the two poles of cosmic energy are yang (positive) and yin (negative), and their conventional signs are respectively —— and — —. The ideograms indicate the sunny and shady sides of a hill, fou , and they are associated with the masculine and the feminine, the firm and the yielding, the strong and the weak, the light and the dark, the rising and the falling, heaven and earth, and they are even recognized in such everyday matters as cooking as the spicy and the bland. Thus the art of life is not seen as holding to yang and banishing yin, but as keeping the two in balance, because there cannot be one without the other.

The key to the relationship between yang and yin is called hsiang sheng , mutual arising or inseparability. As Lao-tzu puts it:

When everyone knows beauty as beautiful, there is already ugliness;

When everyone knows good as goodness, there is already evil.

“To be” and “not to be” arise mutually;

Difficult and easy are mutually realized;

Long and short are mutually contrasted;

High and low are mutually posited; …

Before and after are in mutual sequence.3 [104c]

They are thus like the different, but inseparable, sides of a coin, the poles of a magnet, or pulse and interval in any vibration. There is never the ultimate possibility that either one will win over the other, for they are more like lovers wrestling than enemies fighting.4

But it is difficult in our logic to see that being and nonbeing are mutually generative and mutually supportive, for it is the great and imaginary terror of Western man that nothingness will be the permanent end of the universe. We do not easily grasp the point that the void is creative, and that being comes from nonbeing as sound from silence and light from space.

Thirty spokes unite at the wheel’s hub;

It is the center hole [literally, “from their not being”] that makes it useful.

Shape clay into a vessel;

It is the space within that makes it useful.

Cut out doors and windows for a room;

It is the holes which make it useful.

Therefore profit comes from what is there;

Usefulness from what is not there.5 [104d]

Yet, as I feel it intuitively, “space” and “void” (k’ung ) are very much here, and every child teases itself out of thought by trying to imagine space expanding out and out with no limit. This space is not “just nothing” as we commonly use that expression, for I cannot get away from the sense that space and my awareness of the universe are the same, and call to mind the words of the Ch’an (Zen) Patriarch Hui-neng, writing eleven centuries after Lao-tzu:

The capacity of mind is broad and huge, like the vast sky. Do not sit with a mind fixed on emptiness. If you do you will fall into a neutral kind of emptiness. Emptiness includes the sun, moon, stars, and planets, the great earth, mountains and rivers, all trees and grasses, bad men and good men, bad things and good things, heaven and hell; they are all in the midst of emptiness. The emptiness of human nature is also like this.7

Thus the yin-yang principle is that the somethings and the nothings, the ons and the offs, the solids and the spaces, as well as the wakings and the sleepings and the alternations of existing and not existing, are mutually necessary. How, one might ask, would you know that you are alive unless you had once been dead? How can one speak of reality or is-ness except in the context of the polar apprehension of void?

7 Tan-ching 24, tr. Yampolsky (1), p. 146.

One yin and one yang is called the Tao. The passionate union of yin and yang and the copulation of husband and wife is the eternal pattern of the universe. If heaven and earth did not mingle, whence would everything receive life?8

8 Ch’eng-tzu, tr. Forke (1), p. 68, mod. auct. See also the works of Ch’eng Ming-tao and Ch’eng Yi-ch’uan in Graham (1).

there is something in us—which Groddeck, Freud, and Jung called “the Unconscious”—which may be called upon for a higher wisdom than can be figured out by logic. In more up-to-date terms one might say that the labyrinth of the nervous system can integrate more variables than the scanning process of conscious attention,

The comment is invariably oracular, vague, and ambivalent, but a person taking it seriously will use it. like a Rorschach blot and project into it, from his “unconscious,” whatever there is in him to find in it. This is surely a way of allowing oneself to think without keeping a tight guard on one’s thoughts, whether logical or moral. The same sort of process is at work in the psychoanalytic interpretation of dreams and in eidetic vision, whereby we descry faces, forms, and pictures in the grain of wood or marble, or in the shapes of clouds. In this connection I must quote some anecdotes about Ch’an (Zen) painters of the +13th century.

In other words, no number has any significance except in relation to those which precede and those which follow. Thus if we were to omit 13 from the series of integers (as they do in some apartment buildings), 1,000 would have to be understood ridiculously and inconveniently as 999, since that would be the actual value of the figure. The point is simply that you cannot omit one integer without upsetting the entire system. What we are beginning to get at here is a view of the universe which is organic and relational—not a mechanism, artifact, or creation, and by no means analogous to a political or military hierarchy in which there is a Supreme Commander.

In the yin-yang and wu hsing theories this organic view of the world is implicit, but it becomes explicit in Lao-tzu, and far more so in Chuang-tzu and Lieh-tzu, though one does not find it stressed in Confucian thought (absorbed as that was with political and social matters) until the Neo-Confucianism of Chu Hsi (+1131 to +1200), in which all the compatible threads of Confucianism, Taoism, and Buddhism are woven together. Perhaps the greatest exponent of this organic view was the Buddhist Fa-tsang (+643 to +712) of the Mahayanist Hua-yen School, whose image of the universe was a multidimensional network of jewels, each one containing the reflections of all the others ad infinitum. Each jewel was a shih, or “thing-event,” and his principle of shih shih wu ai (“between one thing-event and another is no obstruction”) expounded the mutual interpenetration and interdependence of everything happening in the universe. Pick up a blade of grass and all the worlds come with it. In other words, the whole cosmos is implicit in every member of it, and every point in it may be regarded as its center. This is the bare and basic principle of the organic view, to which we shall return in our discussion of the meaning of Tao.

“THE TAO DOES NOTHING, and yet nothing is left undone.”1 [101c] These famous words of Lao-tzu obviously cannot be taken in their literal sense, for the principle of “nonaction” (wu-wei ) is not to be considered inertia, laziness, laissez-faire, or mere passivity. Among the several meanings of wei are to be, to do, to make, to practice, to act out; and in the it means false, simulated, counterfeit. But in the context of Taoist writings it quite clearly means forcing, meddling, and artifice—in other words, trying to act against the grain of li. Thus wu-wei as “not forcing” is what we mean by going with the grain,

It is perhaps best exemplified in the Japanese arts of judo and aikido where an opponent is defeated by the force of his own attack,

The principle is illustrated by the parable of the pine and the willow in heavy snow. The pine branch, being rigid, cracks under the weight; but the willow branch yields to the weight, and the snow drops off. Note, however, that the willow is not limp but springy. Wu-wei is thus the life-style of one who follows the Tao, and must be understood primarily as a form of intelligence—that is, of knowing the principles, structures, and trends of human and natural affairs so well that one uses the least amount of energy in dealing with them. But this intelligence is, as we have seen, not simply intellectual; it is also the “unconscious” intelligence of the whole organism and, in particular, the innate wisdom of the nervous system. Wu-wei is a combination of this wisdom with taking the line of least resistance in all one’s actions. It is not the mere avoidance of effort. In judo, for example, one uses muscle—but only at the right moment, when the opponent is off balance or has overextended himself. But even this effort has a peculiarly unforced quality which is called ch’i , roughly equivalent to the Sanskrit prana—an energy associated with breath.

Just as water follows gravity and, if trapped, rises to find a new outlet, so wu-wei is the principle that gravity is energy, and the Taoist finds in gravity a constant stream which may be used in the same way as the wind or a current. Falling with gravity constitutes the immense energy of the earth spinning in its orbit around the sun.

Lao-tzu (ch. 60) advises the ruler to govern a state as one cooks a small fish—that is, don’t turn it so often in the pan that it disintegrates—and he envisages the ideal state as no bigger than a village.

Supposing here is a small state with few people.

Though there may be various mechanical contrivances, they will not be used.

People will be well aware of their mortality and not

overextend themselves.

Though they have boats and carriages they will not travel in them;

though they have weapons they will not show them.

They will restore the use of knotted cords (for keeping records).

They will be satisfied with their food,

delighted in their clothes,

comfortable in their homes,

and happy with their customs.

Though the neighboring states are within sight,

and their cocks’ crowing and dogs’ barking within hearing,

the people will not go abroad all their lives.4 [101d]

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4 Lao-tzu 80,

It must be understood, in passing, that both Lao-tzu and Chuang-tzu enjoy the humor of overstating their case—the latter sometimes choosing truly preposterous examples to illustrate a point. So, in this instance, Lao-tzu is not to be taken absolutely seriously: but he is making the point that people would be much better off if they would curb ambition, slow down the tempo of life, and not despise working with their hands.

Throughout Taoist writing there is a nostalgia for the “true men of ancient times,” reminiscent of Rousseau and the idealization of the Noble Savage in the +18th century—a nostalgia which fashionable anthropology has for a long time deplored. But today one wonders. Is a long life such a good thing if it is lived in daily dread of death or in constant search for satisfaction in a tomorrow which never comes? Is technological progress a disease, symptomatic of being unable to be centered in and to enjoy the present? As Chuang-tzu puts it:

The man of perfect virtue in repose has no thoughts, in action no anxiety. He recognizes no right, nor wrong, nor good, nor bad. Within the Four Seas, when all profit—that is his repose. Men cling to him as children who have lost their mothers; they rally around him as wayfarers who have missed their road. He has wealth to spare, but he knows not whence it comes. He has food and drink more than sufficient, but knows not who provides it….

In an age of perfect virtue, good men are not appreciated; ability is not conspicuous. Rulers are mere beacons, while the people are as free as the wild deer. They are upright without being conscious of duty to their neighbors. They love one another without being conscious of charity. They are true without being conscious of loyalty. They are honest without being conscious of good faith. They act freely in all things without recognizing obligations to anyone. Thus, their deeds leave no trace; their affairs are not handed down to posterity.5 [62a]

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5 Chuang-tzu 12, tr. H. A. Giles (1), pp. 151–53, mod. auct. For “They act freely … to anyone,” Watson (1) gives, “They wriggle around like insects, performing services for one another, but do not know that they are being kind.”

Is such a state of affairs possible, or is this all an idle dream? Remembering that Chuang-tzu exaggerates to make his points, the practical message seems to be that only trouble is made by those who strive to improve themselves and the world by forceful means. “Ah, Liberty—what crimes are committed in thy name!” The idealism of the French, American, and Russian revolutions has always, sooner or later, led to excesses of violence which are justified as being for the liberation and welfare of the peoples molested.

There has been such a thing as letting mankind alone; there has never been such a thing as governing mankind [with success]. Letting alone springs from fear lest men’s natural dispositions be perverted and their virtue laid aside. But if their natural dispositions be not perverted nor their virtue laid aside, what room is there left for government?7 [63a]

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7 Chuang-tzu 11, tr. H. A. Giles (1), p. 119.

When it comes down to it, government is simply an abandonment of responsibility on the assumption that there are people, other than ourselves, who really know how to manage things. But the government, run ostensibly for the good of the people, becomes a self-serving corporation. To keep things under control it proliferates laws of ever-increasing complexity and unintelligibility, and hinders productive work by demanding so much accounting on paper that the record of what has been done becomes more important than what has actually been done.

The Taoist moral is that people who mistrust themselves and one another are doomed.

Taoist view that we must make the desperate gamble of trusting ourselves and others. However, Lao-tzu makes the reservation, in describing his ideal community, that “though the people have weapons, they do not show them,” since weapons are, up to a point, a natural extension of teeth, claws, and shells. The Taoist view of nature was not sentimental. It recognized that violence had sometimes to be used, but always with regret, for

The best soldier is not soldierly;

The best fighter is not ferocious.8 [100a]

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8 Lao-tzu 68, tr. Ch’u Ta-kao (1), p. 83.

In this respect the Confucians and the Taoists were really of one mind. For at the head of all virtues Confucius put, not righteousness (i ), but human-heartedness (jen ), which is not so much benevolence, as often translated, but being fully and honestly human—a quality which he refused to define as Lao-tzu would not define Tao.

True manhood requires a great capacity and the road thereto is difficult to reach. You cannot lift it by your hands and you cannot reach it by walking on foot. He who approaches it to a greater degree than others may already be called “a true man.” Now is it not a difficult thing for a man to try to reach this standard by sheer effort? Therefore, if the gentleman measures men by the absolute standard of righteousness [i], then it is difficult to be a real man. But if he measures by the standard of man, then the better people will have some standard to go by….

For a long time it has been difficult to find examples of true men. Only the superior man can reach that state. Therefore the superior man does not try to criticize people for what he himself fails in, and he does not put people to shame for what they fail in…. One who is not a true man cannot long stand poverty, nor can he stand prosperity for long. A true man is happy and natural in living according to the principles of true manhood, but a [merely] wise man thinks it is advantageous to do so…. The superior man goes through his life without any one preconceived course of action or any taboo. He merely decides for the moment what is the right thing to do…. The goody-goodies are the thieves of virtue.9

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9 Li Chi 32, tr. Lin Yutang (2), pp. 830–35.

In other words, a true human* is not a model of righteousness, a prig or a prude, but recognizes that some failings are as necessary to genuine human nature as salt to stew. Merely righteous people are impossible to live with because they have no humor, do not allow the true human nature to be, and are dangerously unconscious of their own shadows. Like all legalists and busybodies, they are trying to put the world on a Procrustean bed of linear regulations so that they are unable to make reasonable compromises. In warfare they fight to the death for unconditional surrender, and, in the name of righteous principle, will obliterate a territory which they would be better advised simply to capture and enjoy in a selfish, but much less harmful, spirit. It is an essential, then, of political wu-wei that one does not try to enforce laws against human nature and send people to jail for “sins,” or crimes without unwilling victims. Trust in human nature is acceptance of the good-and-bad of it, and it is hard to trust those who do not admit their own weaknesses.

Chuang-tzu seems to exult in just going along with the process.

You have had the nerve to be born human, and you are delighted. But this body undergoes myriads of changes that never come to an end, and does it not thus afford occasion for joys incalculable? Therefore the sage enjoys himself in that from which there is no possibility of separation, and by which all things are preserved. He considers early death or old age, his beginning and his ending, all to be good, and in this other men imitate him. How much more will they do so in regard to that [Tao] on which all things depend, and from which every transformation arises!14 [68b]

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14 Ibid., p. 291, mod. auct.

In other words, what is ordinarily felt as the wayward, unpredictable, dangerous, and even hostile world—including one’s capricious emotions and inner feelings—is actually one’s own being and doing. The very sense that this is not so is, in turn, part of its being so. Thus from the standpoint of early, Contemplative Taoism (Creel’s term) any deliberate exercise to cultivate wu-wei would seem to be self-contradictory. In Chuang-tzu’s own metaphor, it would be “beating a drum in search of a fugitive,” or, as the Ch’an Buddhists said later, “putting legs on a snake.” In line with Lao-tzu (ch. 38) one might say, “Superior wu-wei does not aim at wu-wei and so it truly is wu-wei.” Understanding it is a matter of getting the point intuitively, not a result of some discipline. In the same way, it does not take any schooling to understand the trick of representing a third dimension by lines drawn in perspective; it simply has to be pointed out, and then the experience of depth in the picture is not just verbal comprehension but actual vision.

Note: chapter 16 of the Tao Te Ching is quite literally taking about Vipassana! Emptying the mind (serenity) and watching the raising and passing of the world. But whatever will justify your addiction problems Watts 🙄

It was for this reason that Hui-neng, the Sixth Patriarch of Ch’an Buddhism (d. +713), called his method “the sudden school,” now derided by crypto-Protestant Buddhists as “instant Zen” (like instant coffee)—as if the value of an inspiration or intuition must be judged by the merely quantitative standard of the time and energy spent in preparation for it. How long does it take a child to know that fire is hot?

Note: you don’t just think about this stuff once and your set. It takes discipline to turn these into altered traits

Contemplative Taoists will happily sit with yogis and Zennists for as long as is reasonable and comfortable, but when nature tells us that we are “pushing the river” we will get up and do something else, or even go to sleep.

Note: when our compulsions tell us to indulge in our addictions, we just give in? The whole point of meditation it to cut the tie between cues and behaviors and to develop dispassion for our harmful habits

Taoists do sit in meditation, but not with the egoistic purpose of improving themselves;

Note: you can engage in self-improvement fir your own happiness rather than to compare yourself to others

There was Pu Liang I, who had the genius of a sage, but not the Tao. I have the Tao, but not the genius. [This surely must be a woman talking.] I wished to teach him, so that he might really become a sage. To teach the Tao of a sage to a man who has the genius, seems to be an easy matter. But no, I kept on telling him; after three days, he began to be able to disregard all worldly matters [i.e., anxieties about status or gain and loss]. After his having disregarded all worldly matters, I kept on telling him; after seven days, he began to be able to disregard all external things [as being separate entities]. After his having disregarded all external things, I kept on telling him; after nine days, he began to be able to disregard his own existence [as an ego]. Having disregarded his own existence, he was enlightened. Having become enlightened, he then was able to gain the vision of the One. Having the vision of the One, he was then able to transcend the distinction of past and present. Having transcended the distinction of past and present, he was then able to enter the realm where life and death are no more. Then, to him, the destruction of life did not mean death, nor the prolongation of life an addition to the duration of his existence. He would follow anything; he would receive anything. To him, everything was in destruction, everything was in construction. This is called tranquillity in disturbance. Tranquillity in disturbance means perfection.19 [70–69a]

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19 Chuang-tzu 6, tr. Fung Yu-lan (3), pp. 119–20.

At the end of seven years, there was another change. I let my mind reflect on what it would, but it no longer occupied itself with right and wrong. I let my lips utter whatsoever they pleased, but they no longer spoke of profit and loss. … At the end of nine years, my mind gave free rein to its reflections, my mouth free passage to its speech. Of right and wrong, profit and loss, I had no knowledge, either as touching myself or others…. Internal and External were blended into Unity. After that, there was no distinction between eye and ear, ear and nose, nose and mouth: all were the same. My mind was frozen, my body in dissolution, my flesh and bones all melted together. I was wholly unconscious of what my body was resting on, or what was under my feet. I was borne this way and that on the wind, like dry chaff or leaves falling from a tree. In fact, I knew not whether the wind was riding on me or I on the wind.20

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20 Lieh-tzu 2, tr. L. Giles (1), pp. 40–42.

100

Especially as one grows older, it becomes ever more obvious that things are without substance, for time seems to go by more rapidly so that one becomes aware of the liquidity of solids; people and things become like lights and ripples on the surface of water. We can make fast-motion films of the growth of plants and flowers in which they seem to come and go like gestures of the earth. If we could film civilizations and cities, mountains and stars, in the same way, we would see them as frost crystals forming and dissolving and as sparks on the back of a fireplace. The faster the tempo, the more it would appear that we were watching, not so much a succession of things, as the movement and transformations of one thing—as we see waves on the ocean or the movements of a dancer. In a similar way, what appears through a microscope to be a mass of plastic lumps bristling with spines is, to the naked eye, the clear skin of a girl. Put very crudely, mysticism is the apprehension of one thing doing everything. Taoists put it more subtly so that “doing” does not have the sense of one thing, the Tao, forcing and compelling others.

103

Wu-wei is to roll with experiences and feelings as they come and go, like a ball in a mountain stream, though actually there is no ball apart from the convolutions and wiggles of the stream itself. This is called “flowing with the moment,” though it can happen only when it is clear that there is nothing else to do, since there is no experience which is not now. This now-streaming (nunc fluens) is the Tao itself, and when this is clear innumerable problems vanish. For so long as there is the notion of ourselves as something different from the Tao, all kinds of tensions build up as between “me” on the one hand, and “experiences” on the other. No action, no force (wei) will get rid of this tension arising from the duality of the knower and the known, just as one cannot blow away the night. Light, or intuitive understanding, alone will dissipate the darkness. As with the ball in the stream, there is no resistance to the up when now going up, and no resistance to the down when now going down. To resist is to get seasick.

A drunken man who falls out of a cart, though he may suffer, does not die. His bones are the same as other people’s; but he meets the accident in a different way. His spirit is in a condition of security. He is not conscious of riding in the cart; neither is he conscious of falling out of it. Ideas of life, death, and fear cannot penetrate his breast; and so he does not suffer from contact with objective existences. And if such security is to be got from wine, how much more is it to be got from Spontaneity.24 [67b]

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24 Chuang-tzu 19, tr. H. A. Giles (1), p. 232, mod. auct.

104

That was one of Chuang-tzu’s charming exaggerations which he clarifies at other points, as when he distinguishes between wu-wei and holding to the mean, the middle road.

But halfway between worth and worthlessness, though it might seem to be a good place, really isn’t—you’ll never get away from trouble there. It would be very different, though, if you were to climb up on the Way and its Virtue and go drifting and wandering, neither praised nor damned, now a dragon, now a snake, shifting with the times, never willing to hold to one course only. Now up, now down, taking harmony for your measure, drifting and wandering with the ancestor of the ten thousand things, treating things as things but not letting them treat you as a thing—then how could you get into any trouble?25 [60a]

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25 Chuang-tzu 20, tr. Watson (1), pp. 209–10.

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Later in the chapter he returns to the same theme:

Mark what I say! In the case of the body, it is best to let it go along with things. In the case of the emotions, it is best to let them follow where they will. By going along with things, you avoid becoming separated from them. By letting the emotions follow as they will, you avoid fatigue.26 [60b]

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26 Ibid., p. 216.

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But it is worth re-emphasizing the principle that “you” cannot go along with “things” unless there is the understanding that there is, in truth, no alternative since you and the things are the same process—the now-streaming Tao. The feeling that there is a difference is also that process. There is nothing to do about it. There is nothing not to do about it. There is only the stream and its myriad convolutions—waves, bubbles, spray, whirlpools, and eddies—and you are that.

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AS IT IS SAID that the Tao as described is not the real Tao, so one might say that te (virtue or virtuality) as either contrived or prescribed is not genuine te . Let us remind ourselves that Taoism is based on the recognition that the world as described is included in but is not the same as the world as it is. As a way of contemplation, it is being aware of life without thinking about it, and then carrying this on even while one is thinking, so that thoughts are not confused with nature. This sounds contradictory until one has experienced it, as by following the suggestions at the end of the second chapter.

110

Te is the realization or expression of the Tao in actual living, but this is not virtue in the sense of moral rectitude. It is rather as when we speak of the healing virtues of a plant, having the connotation of power or even magic, when magic refers to wonderful and felicitous events which come about spontaneously. In theistic terms, te is what happens “by the grace of God” as distinct from human striving, though without the implication of any supernatural intervention in the course of nature. We might call it “virtuality” as the word was used by William Caxton to mean the possession of force or power, or as when Sir Thomas Browne said that “in one graine of corne there lyeth dormant the virtuality of many other, and from thence sometimes proceed an hundred eares.” Te is thus already present in the “miraculous” fruition of plants, the formation of eyes and ears, the circulation of blood, and the reticulation of nerves—since all this comes about without conscious direction. Cultures which limit the definition of “self” to the faculty of conscious attention therefore attribute these workings to an external God, or to “unconscious mechanisms” (dei ex machina).

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But for the Taoists there is more to te than our ordinary natural functioning, even though “ordinary mind [hsin ] is the Tao.” Te is also the unusual and thus remarkable naturalness of the sage—his unself-conscious and uncontrived skill in handling social and practical affairs, which John Lilly calls “coincidence control.”

Superior virtue [te] is not (intentionally) virtuous,

and thus is virtue.

Inferior virtue does not let go of being virtuous,

and thus is not virtue.

Superior virtue uses no force,

but nothing is left undone.

Inferior virtue uses force,

but achieves nothing.1 [100c]

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1 Lao-tzu 38, tr. auct.

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But te often goes unnoticed because of its apparent ordinariness, as if it involved a sort of spiritual camouflage or anonymity like the unintentional protective coloring of a bird or moth.

The greatest perfection seems imperfect;

Yet its use will last without decay.

The greatest fullness seems empty;

Yet its use cannot be exhausted.

The greatest straightness seems crooked;

The greatest dexterity seems awkward;

The greatest eloquence seems stammering.2 [100d]

And so also:

The best soldier is not soldierly;

The best fighter is not ferocious;

The best conqueror does not take part in war;

The best employer of men keeps himself below them.3

[99a]

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2 Lao-tzu 45, tr. Ch’u Ta-kao (1), p. 60.

3 Lao-tzu 68, tr. Ch’u Ta-kao (1), p. 83.

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This, however, is not deliberate self-effacement, not punishment of oneself, and not assumed humility in the presence of That which is greater than ourselves. It is more like the innocent practicality of a cat—though “knowing,” in that the sage is well aware of the artificialities of the world of men.

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One could say that te is natural virtue, based on inner feeling, as distinct from artificial virtue, based on a following of rules—but doesn’t this raise an artificial distinction between the natural and the artificial? Perhaps such a distinction does not exist fundamentally, since “the Tao is that from which nothing can deviate.” But those who do not realize this try to harmonize themselves with the Tao by attempting to state the principles of nature in words, and then to follow them as if they were laws. So Lao-tzu continues his chapter on te:

(Even) the best will in the world [jen ], when forced,

achieves nothing.

The best righteousness, when forced,

achieves nothing.

The best good-form, when forced,

does not come out right,

and so, as ever, mere “elbow-grease” is used

to enforce law.4 [99b]

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4 Lao-tzu 38, tr. auct. This chapter is translated in so many ways that it is sometimes hard to realize that they represent the same Chinese text. I have had to assume, for the sake of consistency, that in the second sentence (on righteousness) yu should be read as wu .

112

Te is thus the natural miracle of one who seems born to be wise and humane, comparable to what we call “perfect specimens” of flowers, trees, or butterflies—though sometimes our notions of the perfect specimen are too formal. Thus Chuang-tzu enlarges on the extraordinary virtue of being a hunchback, and goes on to suggest that being weird in mind may be even more advantageous than being weird in body. He compares the hunchback to a vast tree which has grown to a great old age by virtue of being useless for human purposes because its leaves are inedible and its branches twisted and pithy.5 Formally healthy and upright humans are conscripted as soldiers, and straight and strong trees are cut down for lumber; wherefore the sage gets by with a perfect appearance of imperfection, such as we see in the gnarled pines and craggy hills of Chinese painting.

112

Many passages in Taoist literature illustrate te in terms of various skills—of the carpenter, butcher, wheelwright, boatman, and so forth.

Ch’ui the artisan could draw circles with his hand better than with compasses. His fingers seemed to accommodate themselves so naturally to the thing he was working at, that it was unnecessary to fix his attention. His mental faculties thus remained one, and suffered no hindrance.6 [66a]

Those who cannot make perfect without arc, line, compasses, and square, injure the natural constitution of things. Those who require cords to bind and glue to stick, interfere with the natural functions of things. And those who seek to satisfy the mind of man by fussing with ceremonies and music and preaching charity and duty to one’s neighbor, thereby destroy the intrinsic nature of things. For there is such an intrinsic nature in things, in this sense:—Things which are curved require no arcs; things which are straight require no lines; things which are round require no compasses; things which are rectangular require no squares; things which stick require no glue; things which hold together require no cords.7 [57a]

126

6 Chuang-tzu 19, tr. H. A. Giles (1), p. 242.

7 Chuang-tzu 8, tr. H. A. Giles (1), pp. 101–2, mod. auct.

113

In this way old-fashioned Japanese carpenters use no blueprints and judge everything by eye, putting together marvelous pieces of joinery without nails or glue. But the art is being lost because their children, who should begin studying the craft at least by the time they are seven years old, must instead be sent to school to learn bureaucracy and business.

Ch’ing, the chief carpenter, was carving wood into a stand for hanging musical instruments. When finished, the work appeared to those who saw it as though of supernatural execution. And the prince of Lu asked him, saying, “What mystery is there in your art?”

“No mystery, your Highness,” replied Ch’ing; “and yet there is something. When I am about to make such a stand, I guard against any diminution of my vital power. I first reduce my mind to absolute quiescence. Three days in this condition, and I become oblivious of any reward to be gained. Five days, and I become oblivious of any fame to be acquired. Seven days, and I become unconscious of my four limbs and my physical frame. Then, with no thought of the Court present in my mind, my skill becomes concentrated, and all disturbing elements from without are gone. I enter some mountain forest. I search for a suitable tree. It contains the form required, which is afterwards elaborated. I see the stand in my mind’s eye, and then set to work. Otherwise, there is nothing. I bring my own natural capacity into relation with that of the wood. What was suspected to be of supernatural execution in my work was due solely to this.”8 [65a]

126

8 Chuang-tzu 19, tr. H. A. Giles (1), pp. 240–41.

114

Remembering that Chuang-tzu puts his own words into the mouth of Confucius, there is this about the skill of the boatman:

Yen Yüan said to Confucius, “When I crossed over the Shang-shen rapid, the boatman managed his craft with marvellous skill. I asked him if handling a boat could be learnt. ‘It can,’ replied he. ‘The way of those who know how to keep you afloat is more like sinking you. They row as if the boat wasn’t there.’ I enquired what this meant, but he would not tell me. May I ask its signification?”

“It means,” answered Confucius, “that such a man is oblivious of the water around him. He regards the rapid as though dry land. He looks upon an upset as an ordinary cart accident. And if a man can but be impervious to capsizings and accidents in general, whither should he not be able comfortably to go?”9 [66b]

126

9 Chuang-tzu 19, tr. H. A. Giles (1), pp. 233–34. But there is a very different rendering in Watson (1), p. 200, where the boatman says, “Certainly. A good swimmer will in no time get the knack of it. And if a man can swim under water, he may never have seen a boat before and still he’ll know how to handle it!”

114

But the expert cannot always explain the secret of his craft, and even when, in the Chuang-tzu writings, he does explain, the explanation is always somewhat elusive. Here is the wheel-wright speaking:

In making a wheel, if you work too slowly, you can’t make it firm; if you work too fast, the spokes won’t fit in. You must go neither too slowly nor too fast. There must be co-ordination of mind and hand. Words cannot explain what it is, but there is some mysterious art herein. I cannot teach it to my son; nor can he learn it from me. Consequently, though seventy years of age, I am still making wheels in my old age.10 [59b]

126

10 Chuang-tzu 13, tr. H. A. Giles (1), p. 171.

115

But there is the irresistible temptation in us to find out how, which is to learn the secret by a linear, step-by-step method, or to be told in words. How is it that people ask for, say, dancing to be explained to them, instead of just watching and following? Why is there formal instruction to teach something so natural as swimming? Why do human beings have to read books to understand copulation? The mythologies of many cultures contain, in varying ways, the theme that man has fallen from grace and has had to replace it with technology.

When the great Tao was lost,

there came (ideas of) humanity and justice.

When knowledge and cleverness arrived,

there came great deceptions.

When familial relations went out of harmony,

there came (ideas of) good parents and loyal children.

When the nation fell into disorder and misrule,

there came (ideas of) loyal ministers.11 [99c]

126

11 Lao-tzu 18, tr. auct.

115

The organization of the physical organism is far more complex than that of any political or commercial corporation, and yet it works with a minimum of conscious control. The circuits of brain and nerve are more subtle than any computer system, and we hardly know how we grew them. But when history began we put on clothes, picked up tools, and learned how to speak and think. In the words of Lancelot Whyte:

Thought is born of failure. When action satisfies there is no residue to hold the attention; to think is to confess a lack of adjustment which we must stop to consider. Only when the human organism fails to achieve an adequate response to its situation is there material for the processes of thought, and the greater the failure the more searching they become…. Confucius is the first clear example of a man in this situation. Concerned at the disintegration of primitive Chinese civilization, he sought to restore order by relying on the power of ideas to organize behavior. He was aware of what he was trying to do: society was to be set right by calling everything by its right name, or as he put it, by the “rectification of names” [cheng ming ].12

126

12 Whyte (l), p. 1.

116

The Taoists saw the “rectification of names” as a vicious circle, for with what names are the right names to be defined? The conscious control of life seems to involve us in ever more bewildering webs of complexity so that, despite their initial successes, technics create more problems than they solve.

117

The failure from which thought is born is, of course, failure to survive. The Contemplative Taoists, while rejecting the quest for immortality, were certainly concerned with “living out one’s natural term of life,” which is why Chuang-tzu commended the hunchback and the useless tree. But they are also saying that the chances of survival are best when there is no anxiety to survive, and that the greatest power (te) is available to those who do not seek power and who do not use force. To be anxious to survive is to wear oneself out, and to seek power and use force is to overstrain one’s system. One is best preserved by floating along without stress, all of which is the same as Jesus’ doctrine of not being anxious for the morrow, and the Bhagavad-Gita’s principle of action without concern for results (nishkama karma). This theme runs throughout the spiritual literature of the world: that you will get it if you do not want (i.e., lack) it, and that to him that hath shall be given.

118

To those who feel that they have not, this is an exasperating paradox. If, deep down inside, you want most desperately to survive and to be in control of things, you cannot genuinely take the attitude of not worrying about it. Yet, surely, trying to stop the worry is still effort to control, and, in the spirit of wu-wei, you must allow yourself the freedom to worry—to “let the mind think whatever it wants to think” (Lieh-tzu). But “you must allow yourself” is just a way of talking, a grammatic fiction, since—to drive the point home—you are at least all that you experience, and your mind or consciousness is identical with what we call space, all of it. If someone cuts off your head, this, and all the terror involved, is what you are doing to yourself. The total unconsciousness which “follows” is the intense negative counterpart of the intense positive sensation of being alive and real, the yin aspect of the yang. The prospect, and memory, of very real death—total annihilation—are what give verve and importance to life. As in the yin-yang symbol of the double helix, they are the alternating pulses of that eternal series of surprises called oneself, in which the forgettory is as necessary as the memory. Thus Chuang-tzu writes of the death of Lao-tzu:

The Master came because it was time. He left because he followed the natural flow. Be content with the moment, and be willing to follow the flow; then there will be no room for grief or joy. In the old days this was called freedom from bondage. The wood is consumed but the fire burns on, and we do not know when it will come to an end.13 [61a]

127

13 Chuang-tzu 3 ad fin., tr. Gia-fu Feng (2), p. 59.

119

To blend the Taoist and Buddhist terms, we might say that te is the virtuality, the grace in living, which comes naturally from prajna—the intuitive realization of being one with the Tao. Te is not to be confused with siddhi as cultivated by psychophysical gymnastics. However, the following passage from Chuang-tzu is often cited by Hsien Taoists as authority for the cultivation of miraculous powers:

He who understands the Way [Tao] is certain to have command of basic principles. He who has command of basic principles is certain to know how to deal with circumstances. And he who knows how to deal with circumstances will not allow things to do him harm. When a man has perfect virtue [te], fire cannot burn him, water cannot drown him, cold and heat cannot afflict him, birds and beasts cannot injure him.

But, he goes on to say:

I do not say that he makes light of these things. I mean that he distinguishes between safety and danger, contents himself with fortune or misfortune, and is cautious in his comings and goings. Therefore nothing can harm him.16 [58b]

In other words, his freedom from harm is due, not to magic, but to intelligent circumspection.

127

16 Chuang-tzu 17, tr. Watson (1), p. 182.

120

Lieh-tzu, although having the reputation of being able to ride on the wind ,17 quotes Yang Chu —with apparent approval —in a passage which seems to go even further than Chuang-tzu in praise of taking life easily:

Let the ear hear what it longs to hear, the eye see what it longs to see, the nose smell what it likes to smell, the mouth speak what it wants to speak, let the body have every comfort that it craves, let the mind do as it will. Now what the ear wants to hear is music, and to deprive it of this is to cramp the sense of hearing. What the eye wants to see is carnal beauty; and to deprive it is to cramp the sense of sight. What the nose craves for is to have near it the fragrant plants shu [dogwood] and lan [orchids]; and if it cannot have them, the sense of smell is cramped. What the mouth desires is to speak of what is true and what false; and if it may not speak, then knowledge is cramped. What the body desires for its comfort is warmth and good food. Thwart its attainment of these, and you cramp what is natural and essential to man. What the mind wants is liberty to stray whither it will, and if it has not this freedom, the very nature of man is cramped and thwarted. Tyrants and oppressors cramp us in every one of these ways. Let us depose them, and wait happily for death to come.18

127

17 As already suggested, I doubt if this is to be taken literally. To ride the wind must be an equivalent of what we call walking on air or being lighthearted.

121

But this passage might easily be misunderstood if not read in conjunction with Chuang-tzu’s idea of “fasting the heart (mind)” (hsin chai ). The words are again put into the mouth of Confucius, speaking to one who has practiced ordinary, or religious, fasting to no effect.

You are trying to unify yourself, so you don’t listen with your ears but with your heart (mind); you don’t listen with your mind but with your spirit [ch’i ].* (Let) hearing stop with the ears, and the mind stop at thinking (or, at symbols). Then the spirit is a void embracing everything, and only the Tao includes the void. This void is the fasting of the heart (mind).19 [61b]

128

19 Chuang-tzu 4, tr. auct.

122

To understand this we must go back to the basic Taoist philosophy of natural order and political government. “The Tao loves and nourishes all things, but does not lord it over them.” So, in the same way, the government of the body and psyche must not be egocentric. The senses, feelings, and thoughts must be allowed to be spontaneous (tzu-jan) in the faith that they will then order themselves harmoniously. To try to control the mind forcefully is like trying to flatten out waves with a board, and can only result in more and more disturbance. As some of our own psychotherapists have put it, “Leave your mind alone”—and this is surely what Chuang-tzu means by fasting it. Thus “trying to unify yourself” must mean trying to subject your organism to autocratic government. There is a clear parallel in the psychology of Indian Yoga, as when it is said in the Gita:

The man who is united with the Divine and knows the truth thinks “I do nothing at all” for in seeing, hearing, touching, smelling, tasting, walking, sleeping, breathing; in speaking emitting, grasping, opening and closing the eyes he holds that only the senses are occupied with the objects of the senses.20

128

20 Bhagavad-Gita 5. 8–9, tr. Radhakrishnan (1), p. 177.

122

In many cultures people are brought up to mistrust their own organisms, and, as children, are taught to control their thoughts, emotions, and appetites by muscular efforts such as clenching the teeth or fists, frowning to concentrate attention, scratching the head to think, staring to see, holding the breath or tightening the diaphragm or rectum to inhibit emotion. These strainings are largely futile because the nervous system is not muscle but electric circuitry,

123

The human organism has the same kind of innate intelligence as the ecosystems of nature, and the wisdom of the nerves and senses must be watched with patience and respect. This is why, as Joseph Needham points out, the Taoists contributed far more to Chinese science than the Confucians, for whereas the latter had their noses in books and were concerned with the following of rules, the former were observers of nature. Taoist literature abounds with comments on the behavior of animals, insects, reptiles, plants, wind, water, and the heavenly bodies, whereas Confucian literature is almost exclusively preoccupied with political and social relations. He goes on to show, with parallels from the West, that mysticism and empiricism go together in opposition to scholasticism—that they base themselves on the nonlinear world of experience rather than the linear world of letters. What is important for the mystic is not belief in the right doctrine but attainment of the true experience, whereas the scholastic theologians would not look through Galileo’s telescope because they considered that they already knew, from Scripture, the order of the heavens. The scientist and the mystic both make experiments in which what has been written is always subordinate to the observation of what is.21

123

Confucians, along with Hebrew, Islamic, and Catholic scholastics, as well as Protestant fundamentalists, are like tourists who study guidebooks and maps instead of wandering freely and looking at the view. Speech and writing are undoubtedly marvelous, but for this very reason they have a hypnotic and fascinating quality which can lead to the neglect of nature itself until they become too much of a good thing. Thus when “the rule of law” becomes absolutized and everything is done by the book or the computer, people call out in desperation for the intervention of a reasonable human being.

124

This is why there are no rules for te, and why there can be no textbook for instructing judges and lawyers in the senses of equity and fair play. One has to have the “feel” for it, in the same way that Chuang-tzu’s wheelwright had the feel for making wheels but could not put it into words. The same is true in music, painting, and cookery, for Lao-tzu says:

The five colors blind one’s eyes;

The five tones deafen one’s ears;

The five tastes ruin one’s palate.22 [99d]

128

22 Lao-tzu 12, tr. auct.

124

He is, of course, referring to the formal rules and classifications for these arts, as to say that if you think there are only five colors, you must be blind, and deaf if you think that all music has to be in the pentatonic scale. This is, alas, the reason why schools for these various arts produce so few geniuses, and why the genius—the person of te—is always going beyond the rules, not because of an obstreperous and antisocial spirit with hostile intent, but because the fountain of creative work is an intelligent questioning of the rules. The early Taoists were therefore questioning the validity of normal Chinese, and generally Confucian, common sense.

125

At root, then, the idea of te is power exercised without the use of force and without undue interference with the order of surrounding circumstances.

Entering the forest without moving the grass;

Entering the water without raising a ripple.23

128

23 Zenrin Kushu 10, p. 164, tr. auct.

125

Going back to the original form of the ideogram, te means going along with unity of eye and heart (mind). This is intelligent perception of the course of things, as the navigator observes the stars and the sailor watches the currents and winds.

125

Yet this intelligence is more than mere calculation and measurement. It includes that; but Heyerdahl’s genius was that he had a basic trust in the unified system of his own organism and the ecosystem of the Pacific, and was therefore almost as intelligent as a dolphin. By virtue of this attitude he was helped along by events which he had not consciously expected.

125

In a material and practical sense, Heyerdahl and such other Taoists succeed. But their success depends on a confidence and lack of self-frustrating anxiety which in turn is derived from the insight that in the course of nature, and in following the line of least resistance, nothing can go wrong. I do not think this is the superficial attitude of Pangloss, of the hearty and thoughtless view that this is the best of all possible worlds.

126

However, to say that it is much more difficult and subtle than that will dismay simplehearted people and delight those proud intellectual athletes who need to be quite sure that, in attaining wisdom, they have done something extremely arduous. The superficiality of Voltaire’s Pangloss is that he is all talk, and will not willingly and shamelessly scream when eaten by a shark. Certainly he will scream, but he will feel that in so doing he has betrayed his philosophy—not realizing that screaming and squirming are the natural way of going along with pain. Taoism is not a philosophy of compelling oneself to be calm and dignified under all circumstances. The real and astonishing calm of people like Lao-tzu comes from the fact that they are ready and willing, without shame, to do whatever comes naturally in all circumstances. The unbelievable result is that they are far more sociable and civilized than those who try to live rigorously by laws and watchwords.

“THE TAO is that from which one cannot deviate; that from which one can deviate is not the Tao.”1 [56a] This sentence from the Chung Yung, or “Doctrine of the Mean,” suggests that there is no analogy between Tao and the Western ideas of God and of divine or natural law, which can be obeyed or disobeyed. The saying is a hard one, because both Lao-tzu and Chuang-tzu speak of forced actions which are at variance with the Tao. The paradox is resolved in a dialogue which occurred centuries later between the Ch’an masters Nan-ch’üan and Chao-chou:

Chao-Chou asked, “What is the Tao?”

The master [Nan-ch’üan] replied, “Your ordinary consciousness is the Tao.”

“How can one return into accord with it?”

“By intending to accord you immediately deviate.”

“But without intention, how can one know the Tao?”

“The Tao,” said the master, “belongs neither to knowing nor to not knowing. Knowing is false understanding; not knowing is blind ignorance. If you really understand the Tao beyond doubt, it’s like the empty sky. Why drag in right and wrong?”2 [56b]

2 Wu-men Kuan 19, tr. auct. In this context hsin must be translated as “consciousness” rather than “mind,” “thought,” or “heart.” But even this is inadequate. “Ordinary consciousness” is the way the world is felt naturally, as by a child who does not yet know how to talk.

In other words, people try to force issues only when not realizing that it can’t be done—that there is no way of deviating from the watercourse of nature. You may imagine that you are outside, or separate from, the Tao and thus able to follow it or not follow; but this very imagination is itself within the stream, for there is no way other than the Way. Willy-nilly, we are it and go with it. From a strictly logical point of view, this means nothing and gives us no information. Tao is just a name for whatever happens, or, as Lao-tzu put it, “The Tao principle is what happens of itself [tzu-jan ].”

It is thus that the Tao Te Ching opens with the enigmatic words which are usually translated, “The Tao which can be spoken of is not the eternal Tao.” [103c] This translation conceals the fact that the ideogram rendered as “be spoken of” is also Tao, because the word is also used with the meaning of “to speak” or “to say,” though it may not have had this use in the —3rd century. Literally, the passage says, “Tao can be Tao not eternal [or regular] Tao.” Many translations are therefore possible:

The Tao that can be told of is not the Absolute Tao (Lin Yutang).

The Way that can be told of is not an Unvarying Way (Waley).

The Tao that is the subject of discussion is not the true Tao (Old).

The Way that may truly be regarded as the Way is other than a permanent way (Duyvendak).3

The Flow that can be followed is not the eternal Flow (auct.).

The course that can be discoursed is not the eternal Course (auct.).

The Force that is forced isn’t true Force (auct.).

The Tao that can be tao-ed is not the invariable Tao (Fung Yu-lan [Bodde]).

In an early form, the ideogram for tao shows the moving sign (the crossroads) enclosing a head, though the radical in later times became cho , moving step by step, rather than hsing , to walk or march.4 We should probably think of cho as “going and pausing” (Wieger [1], p. 789), and thus as “rhythmic movement,” where going is yang and pausing is yin. Thus in the ideogram for Tao cho is combined with shou , the head, and thus Wieger (p. 326) gives Tao the basic meaning of “to go ahead.”5* One could also think of it as intelligent rhythm. Various translators have called it the Way, Reason, Providence, the Logos, and even God, as in Ware (1), although he is careful to say in his introduction that God = Life and that the word is to be understood in its widest sense.

However, it must be clear from the start that Tao cannot be understood as “God” in the sense of the ruler, monarch, commander, architect, and maker of the universe. The image of the military and political overlord, or of a creator external to nature, has no place in the idea of Tao.

The great Tao flows [fan , also “floats” and “drifts”] everywhere,

to the left and to the right,

All things depend upon it to exist,

and it does not abandon them.

To its accomplishments it lays no claim.

It loves and nourishes all things,

but does not lord it over them.6 [103d]

6 Lao-tzu 34, tr. auct.

Yet the Tao is most certainly the ultimate reality and energy of the universe, the Ground of being and nonbeing.

The Tao has reality and evidence, but no action and no form. It may be transmitted but cannot be received. It may be attained but cannot be seen. It exists by and through itself. It existed before heaven and earth, and indeed for all eternity. It causes the gods to be divine and the world to be produced. It is above the zenith, but is not high. It is beneath the nadir, but is not low. Though prior to heaven and earth, it is not ancient. Though older than the most ancient, it is not old.7 [70a]

7 Chuang-tzu 6, tr. Fung Yu-lan (3), p. 117, mod. auct. Note the sophisticated distinction between eternity and everlasting time, and the contrast with the image of the Father-God as the Ancient of Days.

The imagery associated with the Tao is maternal, not paternal.

There is something obscure which is complete

before heaven and earth arose;

tranquil, quiet,

standing alone without change,

moving around without peril.

It could be the mother of everything.

I don’t know its name,

and call it Tao.8 [103e]

8 Lao-tzu 25, tr. auct.

Far from being the active agent, the subject of the verb, the doer and maker of things, “the Tao does [wei , also “makes”] nothing, but nothing is left undone.” [102a] It has the power of passivity for which women have always been celebrated, and one might say that its gravity is its energy.

Know the male, but keep the female,

so becoming a universal river-valley.

Being the universal river-valley,

one has the eternal virtue [te ] undivided

and becomes again as a child.9

The heavy is the origin of the light;

(or, Gravity is the root of lightness;)

the quiet is master of the hasty.10 [102b]

9 Lao-tzu 28, tr. auct.

10 Lao-tzu 26, tr. auct.

Thus the Tao is the course, the flow, the drift, or the process of nature, and I call it the Watercourse Way because both Lao-tzu and Chuang-tzu use the flow of water as its principal metaphor. But it is of the essence of their philosophy that the Tao cannot be defined in words and is not an idea or concept. As Chuang-tzu says, “It may be attained but not seen,” or, in other words, felt but not conceived, intuited but not categorized, divined but not explained. In a similar way, air and water cannot be cut or clutched, and their flow ceases when they are enclosed. There is no way of putting a stream in a bucket or the wind in a bag. Verbal description and definition may be compared to the latitudinal and longitudinal nets which we visualize upon the earth and the heavens to define and enclose the positions of mountains and lakes, planets and stars. But earth and heaven are not cut by these imaginary strings. As Wittgenstein said, “Laws, like the law of causation, etc., treat of the network and not of what the network describes.”11 For the game of Western philosophy and science is to trap the universe in the networks of words and numbers, so that there is always the temptation to confuse the rules, or laws, of grammar and mathematics with the actual operations of nature. We must not, however, overlook the fact that human calculation is also an operation of nature, but just as trees do not represent or symbolize rocks, our thoughts—even if intended to do so—do not necessarily represent trees and rocks. Thoughts grow in brains as grass grows in fields. Any correspondence between them is abstract, as between ten roses and ten stones, which does not take into account the smell and color of the roses or the shapes and structures of the stones. Although thought is in nature, we must not confuse the game-rules of thought with the patterns of nature.

11 Wittgenstein (1), 6.35. Cf. also 6.341–2.

Now the Chinese, and Taoist, term which we translate as “nature” is tzu-jan , meaning the spontaneous, that which is so of itself. We might call it the automatic or automotive were it not that these words are associated with mechanisms and artifacts which are not truly “so” of themselves. Nature as tzu-jan might be taken to mean that everything grows and operates independently, on its own, and to be the meaning of the verse:

(As I) sit quietly, doing nothing,

Spring comes and grass grows of itself.12

12 Quoted in Zenrin Kushu (Ch’an Ling Chü Chi), p. 194,

But it is basic to the Taoist view of the world that every thing-event (shih or wu ) is what it is only in relation to all others. The earth, and every tiniest thing upon it, inevitably “goes-with” the sun, moon, and stars. It needs them just as much as it needs, and consists of, its own elements. Conversely, the sun would not be light without eyes, nor would the universe “exist” without consciousness—and vice versa. This is the principle of “mutual arising” (hsiang sheng ) which is explained in the second chapter of the Tao Te Ching.13

The principle is that if everything is allowed to go its own way the harmony of the universe will be established, since every process in the world can “do its own thing” only in relation to all others. The political analogy is Kropotkin’s anarchism—the theory that if people are left alone to do as they please, to follow their nature and discover what truly pleases them, a social order will emerge of itself. Individuality is inseparable from community. In other words, the order of nature is not a forced order; it is not the result of laws and commandments which beings are compelled to obey by external violence, for in the Taoist view there really is no obdurately external world. My inside arises mutually with my outside, and though the two may differ they cannot be separated.

Thus everything’s “own way” is the “own way” of the universe, of the Tao. Because of the mutual interdependence of all beings, they will harmonize if left alone and not forced into conformity with some arbitrary, artificial, and abstract notion of order, and this harmony will emerge tzu-jan , of itself, without external compulsion. No organization, in the political and commercial sense of the word, is organic. Organizations, in this sense, are based on the following of linear rules and laws imposed from above—that is, of strung-out, serial, one-thing-at-a-time sequences of words and signs which can never grasp the complexity of nature, although nature is only “complex” in relation to the impossible task of translating it into these linear signs. Outside the human world, the order of nature goes along without consulting books—but our human fear is that the Tao which cannot be described, the order which cannot be put into books, is chaos.

If Tao signifies the order and course of nature, the question is, then, what kind of order? Lao-tzu (ch. 25) does indeed use the term hun —obscure, chaotic, turgid—for the state of the Tao before heaven and earth arose, but I do not think that this can mean chaos in the sense of mess and disorder such as we see when things formerly organized are broken up. It has rather the sense of hsüan , of that which is deep, dark, and mysterious prior to any distinction between order and disorder—that is, before any classification and naming of the features of the world.

The un-named is heaven and earth’s origin;

Naming is the mother of ten thousand things.

Whenever there is no desire (or, intention),

one beholds the mystery;

Whenever there is desire, one beholds the manifestations.

These two have the same point of departure,

but differ (because of) the naming.

Their identity is hsüan—

hsüan beyond hsüan, all mystery’s gate,14 [102c]

14 Lao-tzu 1, tr. auct.

The “chaos” of hsüan is the nature of the world before any distinctions have been marked out and named, the wiggly Rorschach blot of nature. But as soon as even one distinction has been made, as between yin and yang or 0 and 1, all that we call the laws or principles of mathematics, physics, and biology follow of necessity, as has recently been demonstrated in the calculus system of G. Spencer Brown (1). But this necessity does not appear to be a compulsion or force outside the system itself. In other words, the order of the Tao is not an obedience to anything else. As Chuang-tzu says, “It exists by and through itself”; it is sui generis (self-generating), tzu-jan (of itself so), and has the property of that forgotten attribute of God called aseity—that which is a (by) se (itself). But in the case of the Tao the form of its order is not only free from any external necessity; also, it does not impose its rule on the universe, as if the Tao and the universe were separate entities. In short, the order of the Tao is not law.

The Chinese word tse comes closer than any other to what we mean by positive law—to the laying down and following of written rules and lists of what may and may not be done, to going by the book. Thus we read in the Huai Nan Tzu book:

The Tao of Heaven operates mysteriously [hsüan] and secretly; it has no fixed shape; it follows no definite rules [wu-tse]; it is so great that you can never come to the end of it; it is so deep that you can never fathom it.15

15 Huai Nan Tzu 9, p. 1b, tr. Needham (1), vol. 2, p. 561.

But though the Tao is wu-tse (nonlaw), it has an order or pattern which can be recognized clearly but not defined by the book because it has too many dimensions and too many variables. This kind of order is the principle of li , a word which has the original sense of such patterns as the markings in jade or the grain in wood.16

16 Cf. Needham (1), vol. 2, sec. 18.7. This whole section is a marvelous discussion of the differences between Western and Chinese views of law, both human and natural. Though the mature philosophy of li was formulated by Chu Hsi (+1130 to +1200), the word appears thirty-five times in the Chuang-tzu book.

Li may therefore be understood as organic order, as distinct from mechanical or legal order, both of which go by the book. Li is the asymmetrical, nonrepetitive, and unregimented order which we find in the patterns of moving water, the forms of trees and clouds, of frost crystals on the window, or the scattering of pebbles on beach sand.

It was through the appreciation of li that landscape painting arose in China long before Europeans got the point of it, so that now painters and photographers show us constantly the indefinable beauty of such lilts as waterfalls and bubbles in foam. Even abstract and nonobjective paintings have the same forms that may be found in the molecules of metals or the markings on shells. As soon as this beauty is pointed out it is immediately recognized, though we cannot say just why it appeals to us. When aestheticians and art critics try to explain it by showing works of art with Euclidean diagrams superimposed on them—supposedly to demonstrate elegance of proportion or rhythm—they simply make fools of themselves. Bubbles do not interest one merely because they congregate in hexagons or have measurable surface tensions. Geometrization always reduces natural form to something less than itself, to an oversimplification and rigidity which screens out the dancing curvaceousness of nature.

But who can straighten out water? Water is the essence of life and is therefore Lao-tzu’s favorite image of the Tao.

The highest good is like water,

for the good of water is that it nourishes everything without striving.

It occupies the place which all men think bad [i.e., the lowest level].17 [102d]

It is thus that Tao in the world is like a river going down the valley to the ocean.18 [102e]

The most gentle thing in the world overrides the most hard.19 [102g]

How do coves and oceans become kings of a hundred rivers?

Because they are good at keeping low—

That is how they are kings of the hundred rivers.20 [102f]

Nothing in the world is weaker than water,

But it has no better in overcoming the hard.21 [101a]

17 Lao-tzu 8, tr. auct.

18 Lao-tzu 32, tr. auct.

19 Lao-tzu 43, tr. auct.

20 Lao-tzu 66, tr. auct.

21 Lao-tzu 78, tr. auct.

So also in Chuang-tzu:

When water is still, it is like a mirror, reflecting the beard and the eyebrows. It gives the accuracy of the water-level, and the philosopher makes it his model. And if water thus derives lucidity from stillness, how much more the faculties of the mind? The mind of the Sage being in repose becomes the mirror of the universe, the speculum of all creation.22 [59a]

The fluidity of water is not the result of any effort on the part of the water, but is its natural property. And the virtue of the perfect man is such that even without cultivation there is nothing which can withdraw from his sway. Heaven is naturally high, the earth is naturally solid, the sun and moon are naturally bright. Do they cultivate these attributes?23 [63b]

22 Chuang-tzu 13, tr. H. A. Giles (1), pp. 157–58.

23 Chuang-tzu 21, tr. H. A. Giles (1), p. 268.

The patterns of flowing water have been shown by Schwenk (1), Kepes (1), and Huyghe (1) to be memorialized in muscle, bone, wood, and stone, and to have found their way into human art from very early times. In watching its flow we can never find an aesthetic mistake; it is invariably graceful in the wave, the flying spray, or the merest trickle. We ourselves are at least eighty percent water, and for this reason the Taoists feel that it should serve as our model,

To sum up thus far, Tao is the flowing course of nature and the universe; li is its principle of order which, following Needham, we can best translate as “organic pattern”; and water is its eloquent metaphor. But we cannot explain li by laying it out flat, as in a geometrical diagram, or define it in the linear order of words, although I am paradoxically trying to do so. Another reason why the Tao and its pattern escape us is that they are ourselves, and we are

Like a sword that cuts but cannot cut itself;

Like an eye that sees but cannot see itself.26

26 Zenrin Kushu 14, p. 267, tr. auct.

By watching the nucleus we change its behavior, and in our observing the galaxies they run away from us—and, in trying to figure out the brain, the obstacle is that we have no finer instrument than the brain itself for the purpose. The greatest hindrance to objective knowledge is our own subjective presence. There is nothing for it, then, but to trust and go with the Tao as the source and ground of our own being which “may be attained but not seen.”

Is there any clear way of distinguishing organic pattern from mechanical and linear pattern, between nature and artifice, growing and making? Obviously, no animal or plant is made in the same way that a table is made of wood. A living creature is not an assemblage of parts, nailed, screwed, or glued together. Its members and organs are not assembled from distant sources and gathered to a center. A tree is not made of wood; it is wood. A mountain is not made of rock; it is rock. The seed grows into the plant by an expansion from within, and its parts or distinguishable organs develop simultaneously as it expands. Certainly, the growing seed is gathering nourishment from its environment, but the process is no mere sticking together of the nutritive elements, for it absorbs and transforms them, and one sees nothing like this in the manufacture of an electric motor or computer. Though we talk about the mechanisms of organisms, surely this is no more than analogy. In studying organisms by the analytic way of breaking them down into parts we are simply using a mechanical image of their structure. Such analysis is the linear, bit-by-bit method of conscious attention, whereas in the living organism the so-called “parts” are exfoliated simultaneously throughout its body. Nature has no “parts” except those which are distinguished by human systems of classification, and it is only by elaborate surgery that any part of a body can be replaced. The body is not a surgical construct put together with scalpels, clamps, and sutures. We must make a distinction between an organism which is differentiated and a machine which is partitive. Machines generating other machines will always do so by assemblage and the linear method, although we are coming to the point of combining such machines as computers with organic elements. In fact the computer was always combined with an organic element— man himself, for man is the boss and creator of the computer.

But the Tao is not considered the boss and creator of our organic universe. It may reign but it does not rule. It is the pattern of things but not the enforced law. Thus we read in the Han Fei Tzu book (early —3rd century):

Tao is that whereby all things are so, and with which all principles agree. Principles (li ) are the markings (wen ) of completed things. Tao is that whereby all things become complete. Therefore it is said that Tao is what gives principles. When things have their principles, the one (thing) cannot be the other…. All things have each their own different principle, whereas Tao brings the principles of all things into single agreement. Therefore it can be both one thing and another, and is not in one thing only.27

This is, again, analogous to Kropotkin’s anarchy. If each thing follows its own li it will harmonize with all other things following theirs, not by reason of rule imposed from above but by their mutual resonance (ying ) and interdependence.

27 Han Fei Tzu 20, tr. Fung Yu-lan (Bodde) (1), vol. 1, p. 177.

The Taoists are saying, then, that seen as a whole the universe is a harmony or symbiosis of patterns which cannot exist without each other. However, when it is looked at section by section we find conflict. The biological world is a mutual eating society in which every species is the prey of another. But if there were any species not preyed upon by another, it would increase and multiply to its own self-strangulation, as human beings, through their skill in defeating other species (such as bacteria), are in danger of disrupting the whole biological order by overpopulation and thus of destroying themselves. For this reason anyone who sets out to govern the world puts everything, and especially himself, in danger.

Those who would take over the world and manage it,

I see that they cannot grasp it;

for the world is a spiritual [shen ] vessel

and cannot be forced.

Whoever forces it spoils it.

Whoever grasps it loses it.28 [101b]

28 Lao-tzu 29, tr. auct. Shen presents problems for the translator, for the usually chosen meanings—spirit, god, divine, supernatural, etc.—are unsatisfactory. I take it to mean that innate intelligence (or li) of each organism in particular and of the universe as a whole which is beyond the reach of calculation.

In the light of this passage from Lao-tzu we must look at the critical section in Chuang-tzu in which the government or regulation of the world and its organisms is discussed. Having first drawn an analogy between the different sounds which various holes and apertures evoke from the wind, and the changing moods, emotions, and thoughts of the human heart, Chuang-tzu goes on to say:

If there is no other, there will be no I. If there is no I, there will be none to make distinctions. This seems to be true. But what causes these varieties? It might seem as if there would be a real Lord, but there is no indication of His existence. One may believe that He exists, but we do not see His form. He may have reality, but no form. The hundred parts of the human body, with its nine openings, and six viscera, all are complete in their places. Which shall I prefer? Do you like them all equally? Or do you like some more than others? Are they all servants? Are these servants unable to control each other, but need another as ruler? Do they become rulers and servants in turn? Is there any true ruler other than themselves?29 [73a]

Just as every point on the surface of a sphere may be seen as the center of the surface, so every organ of the body and every being in the cosmos may be seen as its center and ruler.

29 Chuang-tzu 2, tr. Fung Yu-lan (3), pp. 46–47. But see how other translators render the last sentence. “It would seem as though there must be some True Lord among them” (Watson [1]). “Surely there is some soul which sways them all” (H. A. Giles [1]). “I promise you that there is a real sovereign there” (Ware [1]). “There must be a true Ruler among them” (Legge [1]). I would read it as, “Their true ruler is just in this”—referring to the previous sentence, “Do they become rulers and servants in turn?”

This is like the Hindu-Buddhist principle of karma—that everything which happens to you is your own action or doing. Thus in many states of mystical experience or cosmic consciousness the difference between what you do and what happens to you, the voluntary and the involuntary, seems to disappear. This feeling may be interpreted as the sense that everything is voluntary—that the whole universe is your own action and will. But this can easily flip into the sense that everything is involuntary. The individual and the will are nothing, and everything that might be called “I” is as much beyond control as the spinning of the earth in its orbit. But from the Taoist standpoint these two views fall short. They are polar ways of seeing the same truth: that there is no ruler and nothing ruled. What goes on simply happens of itself (tzu-jan) without either push or pull, since every push is also a pull and every pull a push, as in using a steering wheel. This is, then, a transactional view of the world, for as there is no buying without selling, and vice versa, there is no environment without organisms, and vice versa. This is, again, the principle of “mutual arising” (hsiang sheng). As the universe produces our consciousness, our consciousness evokes the universe; and this realization transcends and closes the debate between materialists and idealists (or mentalists), determinists and free-willers, who represent the yin and the yang of philosophical opinion.

Many would object that this view of the universe abrogates the basic law of cause and effect, as when we think that lack of rain causes a drought, and a drought causes famine, and famine causes death. But lack of rain, drought, famine, and death are simply four ways of looking at, and describing, the same event. Given living organisms, lack-of-rain = death. The notion of causality is simply a lame way of connecting the various stages of an event which we have distinguished and separated for purposes of description; so that, beguiled by our own words, we come to think of these stages as different events which must be stuck together again by the glue of causality. In fact, the only single event is the universe itself. Li, not causality, is the rationale of the world.30

If we try to sort the ideas of Taoism into the categories of Western thought, it appears that what we have here is a naturalistic pantheism in which the Tao—not being a personal God—must therefore be an unconscious though nonetheless formative energy, like a magnetic field. As I understand formal pantheism, it is the idea that the universe, considered as a mass of distinct things and events, is simply God by another name, so that calling it God adds nothing to it, except perhaps a certain attitude of awe and respect. But although Taoists speak of the universe (in the common Chinese way) as wan wu , the “ten thousand things,” this does not imply that it is simply a sum of separate objects. Things (wu) are not so much entities as differentiations or forms (cf. the Sanskrit rupa) in the unified field of the Tao. This follows necessarily from the principle of mutual arising.

The knowledge of the ancients was perfect. How perfect? At first, they did not know that there were things. This is the most perfect knowledge; nothing can be added. Next, they knew that there were things, but did not yet make distinctions between them. Next, they made distinctions between them, but they did not yet pass judgments upon them. When judgments were passed, Tao was destroyed.31 [72a]

And again:

The universe came into being with us together; with us, all things are one.32 [73b]

31 Chuang-tzu 2, tr. Fung Yu-lan (3), p. 53.

32 Ibid., p. 56.

Furthermore, to conceive the Tao as an unconscious energy is as much off the point as to conceive it as a personal ruler or God. But if, as is the case, the Tao is simply inconceivable, what is the use of having the word and of saying anything at all about it? Simply because we know intuitively that there is a dimension of ourselves and of nature which eludes us because it is too close, too general, and too all-embracing to be singled out as a particular object. This dimension is the ground of all the astonishing forms and experiences of which we are aware. Because we are aware, it cannot be unconscious, although we are not conscious of it—as of an external thing. Thus we can give it a name but cannot make any definitive statement about it—as we saw to be the case with whatever it is that is named “electricity.” Our only way of apprehending it is by watching the processes and patterns of nature, and by the meditative discipline of allowing our minds to become quiet, so as to have vivid awareness of “what is” without verbal comment.

The baby looks at things all day without squinting and staring; that is because his eyes are not focused on any particular object. He goes without knowing where he is going, and stops without knowing what he is doing. He merges himself with the surroundings and goes along with them. These are the principles of mental hygiene.33 [64b]

33 Chuang-tzu 23, tr. Lin Yutang (3), p. 86, mod. auct.

AN OFTEN QUOTED Chinese proverb is that one picture is worth a thousand words, because it is so often much easier to show than to say. As is well known, Chinese writing is unique in that it does not employ an alphabet, but rather characters or ideograms that were originally pictures or conventional signs. In the course of centuries, pictograms scratched on bone or bamboo became figures made with a brush on silk or paper, few of which bear recognizable resemblance to their primitive forms or to what they are used to indicate, and they have grown immensely in number and in degree of abstraction.

We may not be aware of the extent to which alphabetic people are now using ideograms. International airports and highways abound with them because their meaning is at once obvious whatever one’s native tongue may be.

such ideograms could convey complex relationships or configurations (Gestalten) much more rapidly than long, strung-out alphabetic sentences. For the ideogram gives one more information at a single glance, and in less space, than is given by the linear, alphabetic form of writing, which must also be pronounced to be understandable.

For the natural universe is not a linear system. It involves an infinitude of variables interacting simultaneously, so that it would take incalculable aeons to translate even one moment of its operation into linear, alphabetic language. Let alone the universe! Take the planet Earth alone, or even what goes on in a small pond or, for that matter, in the structure of the atom. This is where problems of language relate to Taoist philosophy, for the Lao-tzu book begins by saying that the Tao which can be spoken is not the eternal (or regular) Tao. Yet it goes on to show that there is some other way of understanding and getting along with the process of nature than by translating it into words. After all, the brain, the very organ of intelligence, defies linguistic description by even the greatest neurologists. It is thus that an ideographic language is a little closer to nature than one which is strictly linear and alphabetic. At any moment, nature is a simultaneity of patterns. An ideographic language is a series of patterns and, to that extent, still linear—but not so laboriously linear as an alphabetic language.

This critical point—that our organisms have ways of intelligent understanding beyond words and conscious attention, ways that can handle an unknown number of variables at the same time—will be discussed later. Suffice it to say now that the organization and regulation of thousands of bodily processes through the nervous system would be utterly beyond the capacity of deliberate thinking and planning—not to mention the relationships of those processes to the “external” world.

Chinese is simpler than it looks, and may, in general, be both written and read more rapidly than English. The English MAN requires ten strokes of the pen, whereas the Chinese jen requires but two. TREE needs thirteen, but mu is only four. WATER is sixteen, but shui is five. MOUNTAIN is eighteen, but shan is three. Even when we get really complicated, CONTEMPLATION is twenty-eight, whereas kuan is twenty-five. Roman capitals are the proper equivalents of these ideograms as shown, and though our longhand speeds things up it is nothing to its Chinese equivalent. Compare with wu To contrast our writing with Chinese as to relative complexity, simply turn this page through a ninety-degree angle—and then look at English!

To simplify matters further, Chinese makes no rigid distinctions between parts of speech. Nouns and verbs are often interchangeable, and may also do duty as adjectives and adverbs. When serving as nouns they do not require the ritual nuisance of gender, wherewith adjectives must agree, nor are they declined, and when used as verbs they are not conjugated. When necessary, certain single ideograms are used to show whether the situation is past, present, or future. There is no pother over is, was, were, and will be, much less over suis, es, est, sommes, êtes, sont, fus, fûmes, serais, and sois as forms of the verb être, “to be.”

From this it might seem that it is hard to be precise in Chinese, or to make those clear distinctions which are necessary for scientific analysis. On the one hand, however, Chinese has the peculiar advantage of being able to say many things at once and to mean all of them, which is why there have been at least seventy English translations of Lao-tzu. On the other, Chinese uses compound words for precision. Thus sheng which means, among other things, “to be born,” can be specified as parturition, to be born from the world, or begotten, the latter having also the sense of bringing up; and then one distinguishes birth from a womb, birth from an egg, and birth by transformation, as with the butterfly.

An important part of Chinese grammar is the order of words. Although this is in many ways close to English, and does not, for example, remove verbs to the end of the sentence as in Latin and German, one must take care to distinguish the back of the hand (s) from hand (s) behind the back, and whereas is the Emperor, is his father, or the late Emperor. This is not so different in principle from turn right and then go up, and go up and turn right.

of all the high cultures, theirs is most different from ours in its ways of thinking. Every culture is based on assumptions so taken for granted that they are barely conscious, and it is only when we study highly different cultures and languages that we become aware of them. Standard average European (SAE) languages, for example, have sentences so structured that the verb (event) must be set in motion by the noun (thing)—thereby posing a metaphysical problem as tricky, and probably as meaningless, as that of the relation of mind to body. We cannot talk of “knowing” without assuming that there is some “who” or “what” that knows, not realizing that this is nothing more than a grammatical convention. The supposition that knowing requires a knower is based on a linguistic and not an existential rule, as becomes obvious when we consider that raining needs no rainer and clouding no clouder. Thus when a Chinese receives a formal invitation, he may reply simply with the word “Know ,” indicating that he is aware of the event and may or may not come.2

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Chinese is fundamentally what communications technicians call “pattern recognition”—a function of the mind which is, as yet, only rudimentarily mastered by the computer, because it is a nonlinear function. The mind recognizes instantly that A a A a A a as well as are all the same letter, but as of today (1973) the computer has trouble with this. But it does not seem at all inconceivable that a computer could absorb the k’ai-shu , which is the formal and rigid style of Chinese printing, and so begin to approach a nonlinear method of thinking.

The idea of nonlinearity is unfamiliar to many people, so I should perhaps explain it in more detail. A good organist, using ten fingers and two feet, could—by playing chords—keep twelve melodies going at once, though, unless he was very dexterous with his feet, they would have to be of the same rhythm. But he could certainly render a six-part fugue—four with the hands and two with the feet—and in mathematical and scientific language each of these parts would be called a variable. The performance of each organ of the body is also a variable—as is also, in this context, the temperature, the constitution of the atmosphere, the bacterial environment, the wavelength of various forms of radiation, and the gravitational field. But we have no idea of how many variables could be distinguished in any given natural situation. A variable is a process (e.g., melody, pulse, vibration) which can be isolated, identified, and measured by conscious attention.

The problem of coping with variables is twofold. First: how do we recognize and identify a variable, or a process? For example, can we think of the heart as separate from the veins, or the branches from the tree? Just what exact delineations distinguish the bee process from the flower process? These distinctions are always somewhat arbitrary and conventional, even when described with very exact language, for the distinctions reside more in the language than in what it describes. Second: there is no known limit to the number of variables that may be involved in any natural, or physical, event—

this “single event” should—if we could manage it—be considered in relation to the whole universe.

But conscious attention, relying on the instruments of spelled-out words in lines, or numbers in lines, cannot keep simultaneous track of more than a few of the variables which are isolated and described by these instruments. From the standpoint of linear description, there is just much too much going on at each moment. We persuade ourselves, then, that we are attending to some really important or significant things,

The ear cannot detect as many variables at the same time as the eye, for sound is a slower vibration than light. Alphabetic writing is a representation of sound, whereas the ideogram represents vision and, furthermore, represents the world directly—not being a sign for a sound which is the name of a thing. As for names, the sound “bird” has nothing in it that reminds one of a bird, and for some reason it would strike us as childish to substitute more direct names, such as tweetie, powee, or quark.

Chinese calligraphy

the art, which could be described as dancing with brush and ink on absorbent paper. Because ink is mostly water, Chinese calligraphy—controlling the flow of water with the soft brush as distinct from the hard pen—requires that you go with the flow. If you hesitate, hold the brush too long in one place, or hurry, or try to correct what you have written, the blemishes are all too obvious.

But if you write well there is at the same time the sensation that the work is happening on its own, that the brush is writing all by itself—as a river, by following the line of least resistance, makes elegant curves.

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The beauty of Chinese calligraphy is thus the same beauty which we recognize in moving water, in foam, spray, eddies, and waves, as well as in clouds, flames, and weavings of smoke in sunlight. The Chinese call this kind of beauty the following of li , an ideogram which referred originally to the grain in jade and wood, and which Needham translates as “organic pattern,” although it is more generally understood as the “reason” or “principle” of things. Li is the pattern of behavior which comes about when one is in accord with the Tao, the watercourse of nature. The patterns of moving air are of the same character, and so the Chinese idea of elegance is expressed as feng-liu , the flowing of wind.

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in his Kon-Tiki expedition reconstructed the most primitive sailing raft to see where the winds and currents of the Pacific would take him from Peru, and was amazed to discover how his act of faith was honored by nature’s cooperation.

the Tao is of a skillful and intelligent following of the course, current, and grain of natural phenomena—seeing human life as an integral feature of the world process, and not as something alien and opposed to it.

Looking at this philosophy with the needs and problems of modern civilization in mind, it suggests an attitude to the world which must underlie all our efforts towards an ecological technology. For the development of such a technology is not just a matter of the techniques themselves, but of the psychological attitude of the technician.

Hitherto, Western science has stressed the attitude of objectivity—a cold, calculating, and detached attitude through which it appears that natural phenomena, including the human organism, are nothing but mechanisms. But, as the word itself implies, a universe of mere objects is objectionable. We feel justified in exploiting it ruthlessly, but now we are belatedly realizing that the ill-treatment of the environment is damage to ourselves—for the simple reason that subject and object cannot be separated, and that we and our surroundings are the process of a unified field, which is what the Chinese call Tao. In the long run, we simply have no other alternative than to work along with this process by attitudes and methods which could be as effective technically as judo , the “gentle Tao,” is effective athletically. As human beings have to make the gamble of trusting one another in order to have any kind of workable community, we must also take the risk of trimming our sails to the winds of nature. For our “selves” are inseparable from this kind of universe, and there is nowhere else to be.

🔮 The Cosmos

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