Or rather, what would a Taoist creed(1) be if there was one? Although, perhaps creed is not the best word. For example, the Christians have “to love” as a cornerstone of their creed: to love thy God, to love thy neighbor, to love thy enemy, and so on.
I suppose I am asking what would be the cornerstone of a Taoist creed? Before you read on, come up with a few of your own suggestions, just as though you were taking a quiz.
The Problem
Right away, I see a reason for the lack of a Taoist creed. To paraphrase chapter 1, ‘The [creed] possible to express runs counter to the constant [creed]‘ Personally though, I’d say my ‘taoist’ creed is to allow myself to live a virtuous life. That feels odd to say, yet not surprisingly, that parallels the meaning of the words, Tao Te Ching (i.e., way, virtue, engage in). It is not that those words tell me what my ‘taoist’ path should be. Rather, the title’s words summarize what an examined life turns out to be. I don’t agree with Socrates’ bold statement “The unexamined life is not worth living.” Unless he was speaking for himself personally, then I agree for specific reasons. First though, I best break it down the meaning (in “word-for-word” style) of the words Tao, Te and Ching:
Dào (道) road, way, path; channel, course; way, path; doctrine, principle; Taoism, Taoist; superstitious sect; line; say, talk, speak; think, suppose.
Dé (德) virtue; morals; moral character; heart; mind; kindness.
Jīng (经) manage; deal in; engage in; constant; regular; scripture; pass through; undergo; as a result of; after; through; stand; bear; endure.
In the Eye of ‘I’
The most unambiguous word is Dào: road, path, think, speak, way. Jīng is also clear enough. I’ve always seen Jing translated to mean scripture, i.e., the Tao De ‘Scripture’. That’s fine, although I find deeper meaning in the active connotations: manage; deal in; engage; pass through; endure. Dé is the most ambiguous word here: virtue; morals; moral character; heart; mind; kindness. I’d say Dé is a fairly close parallel to what Christ was getting at with his ‘love’ teaching. Most of these words are in the ‘I’ of the beholder, and often emotionally loaded. Morals and virtue take on the color of the creed and dogma of the beholder. Kindness is the least unclear of these meaning; we see examples of kindness among social species throughout nature.
What is Dé in the eyes of this Taoist beholder? According to the dictionary, virtue also means “a quality that is good or admirable, but not necessarily in terms of morality”. So, what human quality does everyone on the planet admire? After years of world travel(2), I concluded this “good” to be personal integrity. It runs silent and deep in people regardless of local factors like religion, education, wealth, and age. It is also something hard to put my finger on… but that’s not going to stop me! First, I’ll set up the criteria as I see it.
The Criteria
At some level, or under certain circumstances, I find everyone despises hypocrisy and dishonesty. This I’m guessing is the result of a ‘fairness instinct’ common in at least ‘higher’ social animals (3). Hypocrisy and dishonesty are especially irksome if we’re the target, cum victim. We’re a lot more forgiving when it is our own hypocrisy or dishonest. However, I think we’re usually unaware of the discrepancy. Our desire driven blind spot, along with clever rationalizations to justify our hypocrisy, guarantees this double standard.
There’s No Escape
The Holy Grail of greater personal integrity lies with the person who is more consistent, at least in recognizing, if not dropping, their double standards. Now, we are all engaged in this path, either deliberately or by dint of unintended consequences (i.e., the stress of wanting it both ways).
There is no escaping life’s lessons. The more you sleep in life’s class, the more you flunk your grade level and have to repeat that grade. You see, it is not making mistakes that is the problem, it is continuing to make the same mistakes throughout life. That’s why my creed must be: wake up, pay attention, and be as rigorously self-honest as humanly possible.
Karma?
Hmm… sounds a little like the idea behind Karma, only this cyclic fate occurs moment to moment, day to day, year after year. This is fortunate in that there is plenty of time to wake up; this is unfortunate for there is only a moment in which to wake up. It is easy to keep waiting for the next moment…
(1) For all I know, formal Taoist sects have their dogmas and creeds, but they don’t count here. Centertao’s brand of Taoism is like that of Protestantism, which is “a Christian religious movement originating in the 16th century from Martin Luther’s attack on Roman Catholic doctrine. It grew to encompass many churches and denominations denying papal authority and believing in justification by faith”. Protestants rely on the Word of the Bible. We are almost the opposite, at least in our reliance on any word or name claiming to be ‘the constant’. That makes having any formal creed or dogma something of an oxymoron.
(2) I spent 15 years traveling around the world (Asia, Africa, Europe, the Americas, and Australia) wandering via much hitch-hiking and working odd jobs when money ran out. This open-ended and on-the-ground level experience gave me an opportunity to get to know the people behind their cultural façade. I became quite adept at discerning the ‘original person’ from the ‘cultural person’, undoubtedly due to my innate acultural nature. I see people as having two personalities, ‘original’ and ‘cultural’. Meeting people one on one, the ‘original’ stands out; meeting people in a group with their fellow countrymen, the ‘cultural’ person stands out. Oh, there is so much more I could say… that’s for another post, another day.
(3) We have been long locked away in a prison of belief from which science is gradually helping free us. In particular, is our belief that we are ‘above instinct’ and capable of free choice. Spiritual paths both prop up these beliefs and attempt to help us cope with the consequences of those beliefs. It is an ironic mission.
It is notable that Buddha’s Four Truths, taken by themselves, are a perfection of natural science aimed squarely at us. However, the evidence must be gathered in from one’s own personal experience to prove they are true. The advantage of modern science is the gathering of empirical proof, and we need all the help we can get!
Here are two Science News reports that point to our fairness instinct. Read these PDF’s if you’re interested, Unfair Trade and Ape Aid: Chimps share altruistic capacity with people.
I just saw a report on 60 Minutes that really demonstrates the fairness instinct, and shows how it is the basis for what we as adults do. Of course, they didn’t come right out and call it ‘the fairness instinct’. Science moves slowly… but surely. Check out the progress: The Infant Cognition Center at Yale. Watch the Baby Lab video clip, What your baby knows might freak you out.
Thanks Carl. I need to let my brain heal before I think anymore. 🙂
That sounds as close to right as you can get and still speak!
The idea is to bring any two sides together, as close to profound sameness as possible. At some point, words and names fail, and questions become answers.
Not of words teaching, Without action advantage.
All under heaven rarely reach this.
How we react to events can tell us volumes about ourselves, although as a species, we rarely seem to utilize the information this way, at least consciously. Probably because doing this challenges everything we stand for and hold on to… to feel comfortable, as you say.
So, in a purely “natural” or “Taoist” point of view, whether I give away a fortune or murder innocent children, it is simply me existing. The labels I or others put on my behavior help us to feel comfortable because we can categorize and understand it. The behavior in itself – whether instinctive or cognitive in origin – just is. Do I have that right?
Haaaaaa! (That is me smilaughing).
Humbling isn’t it. Takes all the ‘special and unique’ out of human self image and thrusts us ‘down’ to join the rest of living kind. Just another ‘microbe’ scurrying about making its way through the jungle.
The benefit of this point of view is that it opens the doorway to Eden, and allows me safe return back to belonging to nature rather than contending with nature.
The liability is that I have to let go of all the ‘special privileges and exemptions’ human culture is want to sell me.
Balance is maintained and, for me improved. Feeling more connected to the whole feels more secure than feeling aloof and ‘special’. One bonus: hypocrisy becomes nigh impossible.
Ahhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh!
Sorry. That was a portion of my brain exploding.
I get the point about any creature getting out of balance. I think. But this gets to ethics and moral relativism. I’ve always understood the Taoist view of ethics is that they are merely social constructs that allow one to interact according to expectation in a given environment … which means there is no universal ethical standard. I use the “eat when I’m hungry” reasoning as a metaphor … eating isn’t good or bad, it is just a natural part of life.
There either has to be a “right = appropriate” amount to eat (which implies a universal ethical standard) or a “right = natural” amount to eat. Surely you aren’t saying that it doesn’t matter because I’m just another rat in nature’s grand experiment?
My head hurts.
Mike
Mike… I don’t know about this, “I should eat when I’m hungry, not when I think I should…” etc.
It is all natural,not only the feelings you cite, but the cognitive fruits of our emotion: the “shoulds” projected from our idealized visions of what ‘could or should’ be. To me it is a matter of balance, and thinking being the most significant trip wire to imbalance that I see.
If any living organism gets too far out of balance, either in its own biological makeup or with its environment, its ‘systems’ malfunction. This leads either to adaptation or to extinction.
Our species is clearly ‘balance challenged’, both biologically vis-a-vis our cognitive powers, and now as a result of that cleverness, we are environmentally challenged as well (nukes, climate change, bio engineering).
However,in my view, we can all relax! Mother Nature is always experimenting; we are just one of her current projects. And beside, we have no free will to do anything about it, even if we ALL realized we needed to. Sure, we all realize something is ‘wrong’, but then seek one scapegoat or another to ease the tension. 😉
Carl
I’ve been mulling this – beneath the surface – since we had the exchange. I get the point about the drive being natural, and the accompanying thinking being a construct that while natural, tends to steer us onto that limb.
So, we talked long ago about the lion: when he is hungry he eats, tired he sleeps, when the strange lion wanders in he fights – not out of hate, but because it is natural. So far, so good.
What about us big brained apes? no different, right? I should eat when I’m hungry, not when I think I should or because the clock is telling me to. I should sleep because I’m tired, even if it is 2 in the afternoon. I’m sure you’d say that I should not kill the guy who, for example, insults my wife, even if I feel like it. I think you’d say the feeling is like the thinking …it is a sign of some imbalance in me.
But isn’t feeling natural? Rage and envy and compassion and selfishness … aren’t those all natural too?
The drive is “most natural”, the thinking that accompanies our drives, and which we project as a ‘virtual reality’, while also “natural”, complicates what would otherwise be simply so. It is the thinking we engage in, set in the backdrop of innate instinct, that leaves us with a sensation of imbalance and disconnection.
Hedonism is simply a symptom of the imbalance and disconnection that play out in circumstances, in which we have no innate grounding. We’ve innovated (‘evolved’) ourselves out on a virtual limb, are cognitively lost and confused as a result, and this causes us constantly seek a return to a root, ‘the mother’ (Eden, God, Tao, or whatever we call it, or if that doesn’t work, to sports, shopping, food, religion, causes, … you name it).
That we are not (by and large) even aware of the corner in which we’ve cognitively painted ourselves is a testament to just how far from the root we are. And ‘progress’ will only exacerbate this. Don’t take this wrong though; I’m not complaining in the least, despite how it must sound. I.e., we probably have an instinct for ‘shoot the messenger’ or ‘if you’re not with us you’re against us’. No no, it’s all ‘good’ and ‘bad’, ‘funny’ and ‘sad’.
From my view, the big brained ape, Homo sapiens, is just another of nature’s evolving experiments. It is truly fascinating to watch, and the deeper I see how this clock ‘ticks’ the closer it returns me to the root. My observations are simply sharing what helps me here, and with others out there.
This I would guess is driven by innate social instinct within me to share and be helpful if possible (albeit minimally). Oh and I enjoy the challenge of putting words together coherently! (I also need to find a way to say more with fewer words though!).
Carl,
Thank you as always for your thoughts.
So …if I may pull this thread a bit further …
“It is inherently without integrity because it is ultimately hypocritical.”
“as long as they get what they feel is ‘good’ and get rid of what they feel is ‘bad’.”
Isn’t this nature? Several years ago you and I had an enlightening (for me, anyway …) conversation about the lion. He does not attack the strange lion out of fear or ego, he does it from instinct. He does not mate because he wants heirs, he does it because it is natural. The lion lies in the shade because it feels cool (= good) and walks away from the cub biting his tail because it is distracting (=bad). There is no hypocrisy because he does not purport to be anything — even a lion. He just is.
So, if I lie in the sun because it is warm (=good) and don’t eat eggplant because the taste is unpleasant to me (=bad) why is that hypocritical? I suppose if I claim to love all vegetables when I see the pretty girl in the produce section it would be …because my motive is other than the eggplant. But the simple seeking of good vs. bad …hedonism without motive beyond the moment …is that not the most natural thing there is?
Hi Mike, Good to see you. You ask good probing questions. This reply is an unedited, off the top of my head… so forgive any boo boos.
“Acceptable norm of honesty” are rife with hypocrisy. Not intentional, I’d say, but manifestations of the blind spot. Honesty is only possible after one reaches impartiality. If you have no ulterior motive, you are more likely to see thinks as they actually are. Nature’s bio-hoodwink is always plays a role in this of course.
“Good” and “bad” are merely cognitive expressions of emotional leanings, mainly pleasure and pain. If dogs could talk, they’d say steak was “good”, spinach was “bad” in accordance with their innate attraction to meat over vegies. Similarly, in social animals (dogs included) there is an innate sense of what is ‘fair’ and ‘honest’, and not. If a member of the group (tribe, society) is going against what is perceived as ‘fair’ and ‘honest’, their is hell to pay.
For example, the leaders in Syria feel its not ‘fair’ that the people are rebelling. The rebels feel it is not ‘fair’ that Assad holds all the power.
Or closer to home: the Democrats feel it’s not ‘fair’ that the rich have so much more than the poor. The Republicans feel it’s not ‘fair’ that the government spends more than it takes in, or that the government has so much power.
I could go on; the examples are abundant. The principle here is instinct rule. What ever you ‘think’ is fair becomes a form of self-centered honesty. It is ‘honest’ in that it directly reflects the believer’s biases. It is inherently without integrity because it is ultimately hypocritical. The hypocrite has to constantly ward of challenges that threaten the integrity of his hypocrisy.
Anyway, the tao points to the relative nature of ‘good and bad’… not that anyone much cares as long as they get what they feel is ‘good’ and get rid of what they feel is ‘bad’. tsk tsk
Hi Carl,
In your text above, I’m interested in a couple of things. First, how are you defining “Integrity?” Most people do so with an inherent assumption of living to a socially acceptable norm of honesty … no doubt your definition will be different.
Second, you seem reinforce social norms above in your comments about dishonesty and fairness. Doesn’t the Tao tell us that honesty and dishonesty define each other, and there is no good and bad?
Mike