The Mysterious Wisdom of the Ancient Orient

"Knowing others is intelligent.
Knowing yourself is enlightened. 

Conquering others takes force.
Conquering yourself is true strength.

Knowing what it is enough is wealth.
Forging ahead shows inner resolve.

Hold your ground and you will last long.
Die without perishing and your life will endure."

- Tao Te Ching

I seem to have started talking about religion in yesterday's comments, I wasn't sure if that was going to come up in this blog.

A very long time ago I talked about being a philosophical Taoist, as opposed to a religious Taoist. I've since learned that the distinction is phoney and problematic - so-called 'philosophical' Taoism is an edited-down version of Taoism concocted by Confucians for Western audiences during the earliest periods of cross-cultural contact, with all the folky bits taken out to save embarrassment. A very rough equivalent might be reducing the Bible down to a couple of books centred around the parables of Jesus and his overall social and philosophical message while trimming out all the hard-to-swallow stuff about miracles, divinity, resurrection, prophecies etc.

'Philosophical' Taoism focuses almost entirely on two books, the Tao Te Ching and the Way of Chaung Tzu, which are more or less the central texts of real Taoism. Historically, there is a colossal amount of Orientalism embedded into the Western consumption of these books and Taoism generally - the usual Californian privileged nonsense, you know the drill: Confucius say, do whatever you feel like and don't feel bad about it. Many serious Taoist scholars pretty much take the approach that if you're not Chinese, there is really no good reason for you to claim any sort of adherence to, or membership of, the Taoist tradition, and that "Western Taoism" (for which associations and centres exist) is total bullshit and actually often patronising to the Chinese (the obvious subtext of 'philosophical' Taoism being 'we are doing it better than you, you illiterate and superstitious peasant').

Fair points all, and I don't think I would now claim to "be" a Taoist (first line of Tao Te Ching: "Tao called Tao is not Tao") - but I do claim to be a Latourian, and there is no question that reading these books, maybe ten or fifteen years ago now, had a surprising effect on me as they have many other Westerners over the years - that is, they have their own form of agency when translated not just into English, but into modern Western contexts.

This is not totally by historical mistake, either - scholarship suggests that the popularity of the Tao Te Ching across China when it first emerged during the Hundred Schools of Thought period depended in part on its delocalised, deregionalised, dehistoricised nature:

"The Tao Te Ching [...] is all but unique in early Chinese literature in that it does not contain a single reference to history or personal names of any kind. The speaker and those to and about whom he or she speaks are all equally anonymous, and the pronouncements of the text dwell in a kind of void, like so many timeless axioms, which is what they have often been compared to." - Burton Watson, introduction to the Stephen Addiss and Stanley Lombardo translation of the Tao Te Ching (generally regarded as the best)

So while it is almost certainly "inauthentic" to become attached to the two key texts while conveniently ignoring the rest of Taoism, it's not entirely surprising that these two texts, in particular the Tao Te Ching, have had the staying power and reach they've had.

It might make more sense to think of 'Western Taoism' not as a religion or philosophy, but as a historical phenomenon or process in which certain texts interact with individual people's values, worldviews and actions. Sometimes the person's ego is too strong for the text to infiltrate and influence the person, and the text is simply absorbed into that person's psychic armoury, and/or displayed as part of the person's outward-facing social armour. This is where it gets a bit Orientalised and culturally appropriative.

But sometimes the text is strong enough to change the person over time, get in there and start rewiring. I certainly remember reading the Tao Te Ching for the first time and just thinking "yep, it all makes sense now, spiritual quest over, cheers". It didn't change my behaviour overnight ("Accept your insignificance." OK boss!) but it's slowly chipped away and will continue to do so, I expect.

There is a notion that the official lives his working life according to Confucianism and then is a Taoist in his free time and in retirement. I think maybe I was hoping to find a way to go "full Taoist", get a low-paying job at a small firm, working with my hands, developing a technical skill, no office politics or any reason to use the internet, etc. Maybe this just isn't quite the time, I'm not ready yet, the path hasn't emerged. I'm only 33.