The following is an introduction to some key concepts from the Daoist tradition, in particular, by way of what falls under the rubric of “philosophical Daoism.” As Chad Hansen points out, philosophical Daoism owes more to “philosopher Zhuang” (Zhuangzi) (4th Century BC), than to the Daodejing or the earlier Neyie, but here I’ll be focusing largely on the Daodejing and only infrequently cite the Zhuangzi, the principal reason owing to the length of dicussion the latter would require, even in an introductory examination such as this (as Hansen reminds us, the former is ‘terse and poetic,’ while the latter ‘is prolix, funny, elusive and filled with fantasy dialogues’).
I have a clear bias evidenced in the interpretation that follows as a result of my belief that the Daodejing is a “mystical” text of sorts, not in the sense that it provides us with descriptive accounts of mystical experience as such, but insofar as it urges the reader to take up heart-mind practices, what are elsewhere often termed ascetic practices or “spiritual exercises” (John Cottingham), and that serve as a necessary yet not sufficient condition for mystical experience. Thus we might say that instead of first-person stories narrating the states and stages of mystical experience, we find instead direct and indirect allusions to the nature and salutary (personal and political) effects of mystical experience.
I suspect a clear if not overwhelming majority of philosophers specializing in Chinese philosophy would not find this interpretation congenial or persuasive, perhaps some of them would not even find it plausible. A training in Religious Studies may account in part for my way of looking at things here and, in any case, it’s clear that this text, as well as other Daoist texts, are liable to a variety of plausible readings, including the “mystical” one, if only because of the literary and rhetorical forms they take. As I noted in the earlier treatment of basic Confucian concepts, I’m not an expert in Chinese philosophy and thus I write as an ardent and inspired amateur wholly dependent on the philosophical labors of others, a dependence that, for better and worse, has not gone so far as to render me completely deferential with regard to the interpretations and conclusions of my betters, although a “mystical” reading is not without some scholarly support. I trust my academic colleagues in philosophy will forgive my temerity or chutzpah.
Dao (Tao) and dao (tao): Dao is best translated as “Way,” and the connotations are of a path or road:
“Etymologically, the character dao is constructed out of two elements: shu, ‘foot,’ and hence, ‘to pass over,’ ‘to go over,’ ‘to lead through’ (on foot), and shou, meaning ‘head’—hair and eye together—and therefore ‘foremost.’ The shou ‘head’ component carries the suggestion of ‘to lead’ in the sense of ‘to give a heading.’ Dao is used frequently as a loan character for its verbal cognate dao, ‘to lead forth.’ Thus the character is primarily gerundive, processionsal, and dynamic: ‘a leading forth.’ The earliest appearance of dao is in the Book of Documents in the context of cutting a channel and ‘leading’ a river to prevent the overflowing of its banks.” (Ames and Hall 2003: 7)
We will distinguish between Dao and dao(s): the former term Chad Hansen translates as “the great dao,” although our rendering is more explicitly metaphysical or, better, more “mystical” than Hansen would countenance (see Hansen, 1992 and 2007). Dao with a lower case “d” will be understood here in reference to “human” or “social” dao(s), and tian (‘heavenly’) or “natural” dao. In the Analects, Confucius speaks of daos rather than Dao, in Hansen’s words, “Confucius treats dao as the kind of thing that could be heard, spoken, studied, corrected, modeled, walked, or wasted, that could be present or absent. A dao can be born and grow, strengthened; it can be small or great. One can master a dao.” (Hansen 1992: 84)
Human dao and tian-dao are prescriptive or normative “ways” where this is understood as synonymous with words like “course,” “method,” “manner,” “mode,” “style,” “means,” “practice,” “art” and so on (Hansen 2007). These daos in effect provide “an answer to any how question, to practical guidance in general” (Hansen 1992: 84). Hence we might speak, for example, of the dao of medicine or the dao of painting.
Both Dao and dao are the subject matter of the first lines of the Daodejing: “The dao that can be told [i.e., put into words] is not the invariant Dao.” The invariant Dao is nameless, that is to say, however much we may have recourse to language and images or symbols to explicate the meaning in conceptual terms, to point to or evoke the Dao, these concepts, images and symbols do not suffice by way of informing us at to what Dao truly, or metaphysically (or mystically) is or Dao qua Dao. This does not mean that we cannot in some sense have cognitive or propositional knowledge of, so to speak, the manifestations of Dao, only that such (propositional) knowledge is not equivalent to what is, after all, the Dao, and the Dao as such concerns nonpropositional knowledge or awareness, what has been called elsewhere “knowledge by acquaintance,” or “knowledge by presence” (see below).
Insofar as we can still speak of a kind of “knowledge,” however rareified or distinct from propositional knowledge (‘knowing that’…), we would refer to this as conceding that, at bottom, or in the end, there’s an ineluctable cognitive dimension to Daoist religious praxis. Knowledge of the Dao as such, like the Good in Platonic thought, or (nirguna) Brahman in Advaita Vedānta, or Nirvāna (nibbāna) in Buddhism, is nonpropositional, which does not mean that it is thereby necessarily irrational, but rather might best be termed non-rational or perhaps even supra-rational or para-rational (where ‘rational’ is understood in a conventional sense). One need not thereby claim that Dao, the Good, and nirguna Brahman, for example, are understood in precisely the same manner in the respective traditions, indeed, it would seem that there is an interesting difference, for instance, between Dao and the manifestations of Dao (between, as it were, transcendence and immanence) on the one hand, and the relation that obtains between nirguna Brahman as Ultimate Reality and the “provisional reality” of the universe (i.e., the universe as neither real nor wholly unreal) on the other hand: the former involves a necessary (positive) relation insofar as the realization of Dao as Ultimate Reality need not entail the cancelling out of, or a claim as to the wholly illusory character of, the natural world (wanwu) (i.e., there is no absolute transcendence in the former case), while the latter entails an eventual realization of the natural world as illusory (māyā), as not “ultimately” real. In both cases there is a dependence of the natural world upon what is designated “ultimate reality,” either Dao or nirguna Brahman, but it seems that in Advaita Vedānta experiential realization of Brahman (so to speak) involves in some sense the absolute transcendence if not negation of the natural world, while in Daoism the relation between Dao and wanwu is one akin to the Hegelian notion of Aufhebung (in which case dialectical ‘ascent’ involves simultaneously a negation and preservation), which highlights the relative truths intrinsic to wanwu and the indispensable yet limited role of language vis-à-vis the Dao. As Bou Mou argues,
“On the one hand, Lao Zi [or Lao-Tzu, the eponymous and legendary author of the Daodejing] positively affirms the role of language engagement with the Dao via names (the constant name—the rigid designator—and the descriptive designators) in capturing the Dao, on the other hand, he alerts us to the limitations of the finiteness of any descriptive names (descriptive designators) and emphasizes the wholeness and infinite dimension of the Dao that transcends any finite aspect of the Dao itself and any finite stage of the infinite development. Indeed, such a transcendental insight itself is delivered through Lao Zi’s own language engagement in the opening passage and other ones in the Dao-De-Jing.” (from his essay in Bo Mou, ed., Comparative Approaches to Chinese Philosophy, 2003)
Nonpropositional knowledge is quintessentially a special type of experiential knowledge, what might be called an intuitive “knowledge by acquaintance” or “knowledge by presence” (rather than ‘knowledge by description’), although not in the Russellian sense (i.e., as an immediate, non-cognitive sensual or empirical knowledge prior to conceptual articulation), but as that phrase was understood, say, by the founder of the Illuminationist school of Islamic philosophy and mysticism, Shihāb al-Dīn Suhrawardī (549/1154-587/1191). Hossein Ziai explains: “A basic Illuminationist principle is that to know something is to obtain an experience of it tantamount to a primary intuition of the determinants of the thing. Experiential knowledge of a thing is analysed only subsequent to the intuitive total and immediate grasp of it” (Ziai in Nasr and Leaman 1996: 449). “The thing,” in our case, is the Dao, but of course the Dao is no “thing,” indeed, Dao is in some sense beyond what can be captured in the conceptual polarity of being (you) and non-being (wu). It is, as it were, Ultimate Reality, meant in the sense that Dao transcends traditional distinctions and dichotomies between reality and unreality, subject and object, existence and non-existence (and we need not claim the God of Islamic Illuminationist philosophy is equivalent to Dao to appreciate the comparison). This Ultimate Reality is, in part, other than or beyond (yet of course in some manner related to) the empirical world we see, hear, and touch, although we should nevertheless understand this world as dependent on Dao, as in some sense a manifestation or revelation of Dao (cf. 1.2: ‘Nameless it is the source of the thousands of things; named, it is “Mother” of the thousands of things’) as the ontological cause of the empirical world or “ten thousand things” (wanwu; Ames and Hall urge us to understand ‘things’ [wu] as ‘both processes (happenings) and events (happenings that have achieved some relative consummation),’ thus we might speak of the ‘ten thousand processes or events’). In the end, the nature of Ultimate Reality or Dao is unaffected by the myriad means we use to grasp it. Dao is invisible (yi), intangible (wei) and inaudible (xi), but it is no less real for all that, in fact, it is (ultimate) Reality.
Mystics in several religious traditions often construct an elaborate specialized vocabulary to describe, analyze, and evoke, post facto, this intuitionist and nonpropositional “knowledge by presence.” The contributors to the Daodejing, however, did not construct such a vocabulary, eschewing any attempt to describe or analyze the mystical experience of Dao (cf. Kohn 1992). Instead, the Daodejing contrasts the experiential awareness of Dao, or the fruits of such awareness, what we might term wisdom, with our routine, cognitive ways of categorizing objects and processes, our learned and habitual ways of conceptually carving up the world. The Daoist could hardly be asking us to give up rational cognition, to abandon our categories, to play loose with our concepts. Rather, she is alerting us to what is forgotten, lost, or ignored in an exclusive reliance on, or in according too much importance to, conventional knowledge, with what philosophers refer to as “knowledge by description” (or ‘knowing that’), with propositional knowledge. And it is this intuitive and non-propositional knowledge which permits us to see propositional knowledge in proper perspective, to appreciate its perspectival and “relative” character (while the knowledge may be relative, our concept of truth is not).
Daoists do have something similar if not identical to the first stage of Illuminationist mystical epistemology, namely, that “marked by the preparatory activity on the part of the philosopher: he or she has to ‘abandon the world’ in readiness to accept mystical ‘experience’ (first, of a ‘Divine Light’ [al-nūr al-ilāhī] and then of ‘unlimited knowledge’ or Illuminationist knowledge itself [al-‘ilm al-ishrāqī]).” In what sense, then, can it be said the Daoist, like ascetics and mystics generally, “abandon[s] the world?” Consider the following from the first chapter of the Daodejing: “Always eliminate desires in order to observe its mysteries” (i.e., the mysteries of the ‘constant Way’ or ‘Nameless’). Moreover, the Daodejing has numerous passages that speak to the illusory and evanescent character of worldly or conventional criteria for success, fame, fortune, and power. Even Confucius, according to Fingarette (in Chong, Tan, and Ten 2003) subscribed to a belief in “worldly abandonment” in this sense, as a properly directed individual will is one that gives up personal willing: “He tells us that we ought to abjure the quest for personal profit, personal fame, or personal gratification of the senses. It is not that there is anything intrinsically wrong with fame, honor, or even sensual pleasure—if such things arise as incidental effects of a will directed to the Way (dao) for its own sake. But better to have poor food and shabby clothes and be unknown, and to will the dao, than to depart from the dao even for a moment” (288-289). As Michael LaFargue (1992) comments on chapter 9 of the Daodejing: “Real worth is typically hidden worth, whereas those qualities that win public recognition typically are less solid and genuine.”
The Daoist is said to cultivate “quiet” (i.e., ‘non-worldly’) virtues like gentleness, frugality and self-effacement. The last line of chapter 45 states that “Purity and stillness rectify Heaven and Earth” (or, ‘can bring proper order to the world’). This celebratory saying is in reference to that stillness and purity of heart-mind (xin²) attained through breathing exercises as part of a meditation practice that serves as a necessary but not sufficient condition for the mystical awareness of Dao, for acting in harmony (wu-wei) with the dao of the natural and “heavenly” worlds. The third verse of chapter 15 (only part of which follows) asks: “Who can, through stillness, gradually make muddied water clear?” This is often taken to be a reference to meditation practice. Proper cultivation of “stillness” brings about a “hidden” or “empty” state of heart-mind capable of penetrating “into the most obscure, the marvelous, the mysterious,” thereby attaining a “depth beyond understanding” (i.e., beyond propositional knowledge and rational understanding, a reference to the difference between knowledge and wisdom; for a more detailed treatment of preparatory exercises [often referred to as ascetic practices] within medieval Daoism, see Kohn 2003). As Moeller (2004) says in his discussion of the fishnet allegory in the Zhuangzi, “‘to get the meaning’ (de yi) in a Daoist sense means, paradoxically, to be perfectly content (de yi) by no longer having any mental contents” (57). Lafargue (1992) points out, and Roth (1999) would concur, that the sayings celebrating the heart-mind qualities of “stillness, femininity, emptiness, and so on” are similar to the “genres and the context in which they occur in the Daoist Nei Yeh (Inward Training) [and thus] suggest a concrete background of self-cultivation (including introspective meditation), rather than intellectual speculation” (206). For Suhrawardī, the preparatory stage of abandoning the world “is marked by such activities as going on a forty-day retreat, abstaining from eating meat and preparing for inspiration and ‘revelation.’ Such activities fall under the general category of ascetic and mystical practices [cf. askesis, or ‘spiritual exercises’ as understood and practiced by the Stoics], although not in strict conformity with the prescribed states and stations of the mystic path or sūfī tarīqa, as known in the mystical works available to Suhrawardī” (Ziai in Nasr and Leaman 1996: 450). Attaining an “empty” heart-mind is equivalent to abandoning a purely personal will and giving oneself over to the “will” or “way” of Dao.
Daoists rely on words and images: analogies and metaphors (Slingerland 2003), allegories, stories (Moeller 2004), and sayings as “proverb-like aphorisms” (LaFargue 1992) in both the Daodejing and the Zhuangzi (we’re not interested here in their striking compositional and even philosophical differences). These textual and literary choices presumably are not without rhyme or reason and, in fact, help account for the popularity of the texts. In this regard, one final comparison of Daoism with Illuminationist mystical philosophy is worthy of note:
“The impact of the specifically Illuminationist theory of knowledge, generally known as ‘knowledge by presence’ (al-‘ilm al-hudūrī), has not been confined to philosophical and other specialist circles, as Illuminationist logic has been, for example. The epistemological status given to intuitive knowledge has fundamentally influenced what is called ‘speculative mysticism’ (‘irfān-i nazarī) in Persia as well as in Persian poetry. By looking briefly at a paradigm concerning the poet-philosopher-mystic’s way of capturing and portraying wisdom, this point will be made evident. [….] In my view, the most distinguishing characteristic of Persian poetry taken as a whole is its almost existential perspective regarding the outcome of philosophy…. From this viewpoint, the end result of philosophy, which is wisdom, can be communicated only through the poetic medium. Innate poetic wisdom thus informs the human being—the philosopher-sage; the sage-poet; and, ultimately, simply the poet—of every facet of response to the total environment; the corporeal and the spiritual, the ethical and the political, the religious and the mundane. The ensuing perception of reality and historical process is constructed (as in the Persian shi‘r sākhtan) in a metaphysical form—an art form, perhaps—that consciously at all stages employs metaphor, symbol, myth, lore and legend. The consequence is that Persian wisdom is more poetic than philosophical, and always more intuitive than discursive. This, in my view, is clearly the more popular legacy of Illuminationist philosophy and of its impact.” (Ziai in Nasr and Leaman 1996: 451)
The communication of what is essential to the pursuit of wisdom, to the achievement of mystical states of consciousness, is best accomplished with figurative language, with poetic or poetic-like language that is suggestive and evocative, analogical and metaphorical, one best suited to a keen appreciation of the limits of communication and understanding through language and propositional knowing, while relying on linguistic forms more sensitive to the nature of non-propositional knowledge and awareness.
Although Daoists declined to systematically elaborate the epistemology of meditative states of consciousness on the order of their Indic and Islamic (Sufi) counterparts, there is nevertheless an esoteric phraseology (discourse) referencing meditation and mystical states of consciousness generally, be it in the Neyie (Inner Cultivation), the Daodejing or the Zhuangzi, hence, for example: “carrying your po,” “concentrating qi” “cleansing and purifying the mysterious mirror,” from the Daodejing. And from the Zhuangzi:
“The ‘Yingdiwang’ chapter tells us, ‘Just be empty, that is all. The perfect man uses his mind like a mirror, responding but not storing, and thus he can overcome things without being harmed by them.’ The ‘Renjianshi’ chapter also glosses this concept of ‘emptiness’ (xu), saying not to listen with the ear or the mind, but rather with the vital force (qi): ‘The vital force is empty and waits for things. Dao gathers in emptiness. This is called the fasting of the mind.’”(Ziporyn in Cook 2003: 50)
Harold Roth has written about this phraseology of heart-mind training and mystical experience in both his translation and commentary on the Neyie (Nei-yeh) (1999) and in his discussion of “bimodal mystical experience” in the Zhuangzi (Roth in Scott, ed., 2003: 15-32). The Daoist notion of wu (here: ‘emptiness,’ ‘nothing’) as a mental state and goal of self-cultivation generally and meditation in particular cannot be the direct or immediate product of the ego or will, as the effort to will such a mental state is thought to entangle one in a pragmatic contradiction identical to similar efforts at “willing what cannot be willed” (Elster 1983: 43-108). The attempt to simply will the state of wu “tends to posit and entrench the very object whose absence is desired,” for “If I desire the absence of some specific thought, or of thought in general, the desire by itself suffices to ensure the presence of the object” (46). The state of mind sought by the Daoist is close if not identical to the “emptiness” or state of “no-mind” sought by the Zen Buddhist (cf. too the pinnacle of meditation in Patañjali’s Yoga Sūtra, namely, asamprajñāta-samādhi, a non-conceptual state of awareness of reality [nirvikalpa]) that permits the absence of “self-consciousness,” allowing one to relate directly to the world, without “without relating also to the relating” (or non-relation to self). We might better see this with examples of “positively defined states that similarly elude the mind that reaches out for them” (p. 50). Elster culls a handful of examples from the late psychologist Leslie Farber: I can will knowledge, but not wisdom; going to bed, but not sleeping; scrupulosity but not virtue; bravado but not courage; congratulations but not admiration; religion but not faith. As he explains, the goal of meditation for the Zen Buddhist (and the Daoist) is a state of mind that “is essentially a by-product. Nevertheless the belief cannot be wholly false, since Zen masters [and Daoist sages] do accept pupils and train them” (49). The state of an empty or still mind, be it for the Buddhist or the Daoist, is essentially a by-product, because the attempt to will the absence of a mental object is self-defeating, involving one in a pragmatic contradiction not unlike the one intrinsic to the folly of what Elster (after Farber), terms “willing what cannot be willed.” Put differently, our Daoist sage lives in harmony with the Dao such that she relates directly—spontaneously, gracefully, wisely—to the world without, in Elster’s words, “relating also to the relating” in a self-conscious or egoistic fashion. And yet there remains the desire, the goal or aim, the intention (or an ‘intentional project’) to attain an empty mind, the state of no-mind or, (as some Indic philosophers would say) the absolute transparency or translucense of pure consciousness (what is called the state of asamprajñāta-samādhi in Yoga philosophy and praxis).
Daoist teachers (and their Yogic and Buddhist counterparts) rely on mind-training and meditation techniques employing breathing exercises in conjunction with other kinds of ascetic practices (e.g., fasting, celibacy, dietary restrictions, etc.) as part of wider moral psychological and spiritual strategies designed to subvert natural or habitual reliance on the will, including routine recourse to familiar modes and patterns of reasoning and a largely egoistic-relating to others and the natural world. These pedagogical strategies are crafted, in the end, to bring about a different way of living and thus a different kind of person, one naturally (as a ‘second’ nature in Kupperman’s sense, for if it were natural simpliciter, there would be no need for mind-training, self-cultivation, or ascetic practices of self-discipline) and spontaneously virtuous and wise, meaning a life lived in harmony with the dao of nature, the dao of tian, and Dao itself. The consequences of living a life attuned to Dao are crystallized in the notion of wu-wei (lit., not-doing or non-acting). In wu-wei, one has wholly given oneself over to Dao inasmuch as it is understood to mean the “absence of action motivated by the agent’s desires, will, knowledge, education, language or socialization” (Fraser 2007: 99; see too Slingerland 2003). Be careful: this does not mean that desire, will, knowledge, education and so forth are without a necessary role to play in the (eventual) attainment of wu-wei , for they are, again, necessary yet not sufficient conditions to achieving a state of awareness and being, a state characterized as spontaneous and effortless, graceful and wise, and thus truly “natural” in the way the world naturally “acts” in harmony with the Dao. Such action is therefore by definition free and spontaneous in contrast to the intentional or conventionally volitional quality of the motivated action that characterizes life in the daily round, the way in which most of us act, most of the time, in our relations or in concert with others and the natural world. Moreover, the freedom and spontaneity of such action is evidenced in and exempified by the manner in which one is able to respond to the exigencies of any situation or circumstance (either the product of our design or one in which we appear to be the mere plaything of forces beyond our control): in a spontaneous, intuitive, and non-self-conscious manner, in effect, in harmony with Dao. Yet wu-wei is still a kind of acting and can be considered, provided we expand our time frame, no less connected to an intentional project (as the philosopher Chris Fraser reminds us) in the sense that a student of Daoism is committed to attaining the goal of wu-wei, to living in harmony with the Dao, and involves herself in the heart-mind training and other ascetic practices crafted to bring that about, as part of the necessary but not sufficient conditions. Thus embarking on an intentional project in this more expansive sense, likewise does not guarantee natural and spontaneous action in the Daoist sense, even if it serves as its necessary condition. What is more, it seems our Daoist needs to rely on indirect pedagogical psychological and spiritual strategies in the short-term if she is to avoid getting entangled in the pragmatic contradiction of “willing what cannot be willed” or the directly intentional effort to attain an empty mind or the state of wu-wei: just ask the novice meditator who seriously entertains the imperative to “empty” her mind to achieve the state of “no-mind,” who struggles to stop the seemingly endless stream of (waking) consciousness.
