Yang and Snowpocaplyse

"There is a long standing rumor that spring is the time of renewal, but that's only if you ignore the depressing clutter and din of the season. All that flowering and budding and birthing - the messy youthfulness of Spring actually verges on SQUALOR. Spring is too busy, too full of itself, too much like a 20-year-old to be the best time for reflection, re-grouping, and starting fresh. For that, you need December." 

 ~ Vivian Swift:

The Alternatives

The more appropriate meaning of Tao is the “alternatives,” which refer to the eternal, ultimate reality (Lao Tzu, Chap. 16 & 25), or all alternative relations or patterns governing the operation of the universe and people’s interaction with nature and with one another. This novel interpretation of Tao is preferred by this author for three reasons. It is consonant with the term’s original meanings in Chinese language. In addition to the “path” or the “way,” the term Tao also connotes “choice(s),” “connection(s),” “method(s),” among others . . . Furthermore, this translation can better epitomize the profuse Taoist notions, which include two intrinsically related themes. The first one is “Reversal is the movement of Tao” (Lao Tzu, Chap. 40). For example, the development and transformation of the universe can be characterized as the two complementary, interdependent phases of Yin and Yang, alternating in space and time. The other Taoist central idea maintains that “Weakness is the usage of Tao” (Lao Tzu, Chap. 40). The best embodiment of this axiom is water. People may obtain the cognizance of Tao by contemplating water. The highest good is like water, not only because water is good at benefiting the myriad creatures, but also because water, which is nurturing, soft, weak and flexible, can vanquish hard and strong obstacles by selecting alternatives to reach its goals. As water does not compete, nobody can compete with it (Lao Tzu, Chap. 8 & 78).

Understanding the universal system has three implications for comprehending social actions: 

(1) Everything in the universe, including people’s cognition and actions, is constantly involved in changing and developmental processes, interacting with one another.

(2) Different actions result from the actor’s different amounts of Te, or the understanding of the alternatives in the situation, because people’s choices of actions or perceptions in the world are fettered by their knowledge of Tao that regulates the nature and people.

(3) An individual can learn and develop Te only when he or she is exposed to Tao, because only Tao, which manifests as more inclusive and alternative ways of perceiving the self, others and situations, can teach the person the meanings of Te. An individual who intends to change others’ actions or perceptions must understand Tao, or comprehend how Tao operates in the universe, including all alternative factors (social, natural, external, psychological, etc.) that interact with the others, to obtain real freedom and consonance in the interaction.

How to Overcome without Fighting: An Introduction to The Taoist Approach to Conflict 

by Key Sun

The Way: Jesus and Chuang-tzu

"How does it come about that the biblical God has something in common with Chuang-tzu’s Way? There are two reasons. First, neither of them tries to know the Source of all things, that is, God or the Way, by means of reason. Instead, they try to realize the Source with their whole body and mind by becoming a nothingness, by becoming free from attachment to things, and by trying to live in perfect accord with the 'working' of the Source. Second, both of them deny the argument from causation to God advocated by Greek philosophy. Instead of trying to deduce God’s existence and essence by appealing to a law of cause-and effect, they resort to “meta-ethical leaps” into nothingness and self-liberation in order to live in the midst of the 'workings' of the Source, in order to know (yãdã) the Way and God. As a result, unlike Lao-tzu, Chuang-tzu regards the Way as an inner moving force, and all things in this universe as dynamic beings in motion. Likewise, the biblical God as a 'meta-dynamism,' infinitely transcending every kind of dynamic motion. He is in essence a 'God at work' ... The Way is the moving force within us. In the Christian sense of the word, the Way is the moving force of the Incarnate Son of God. He 'has come to live within us' who are traveling with him essentially."

~ From "Chuang-tzu’s Way to Jesus Christ as the Way" by KADOWAKI Kakichi

Storms

"Group process evolves naturally. It is self-regulating. Do not interfere. It will work itself out. Efforts to control process usually fail. Either they block process or make it chaotic. Learn to trust what is happening. If there is silence, let it grow; something will emerge. If there is a storm, let it rage; it will resolve itself into calm."  

From The Tao of Leadership Chapter 58, by John Heider

"When a nation is ruled with a light touch, people lead simple lives.
When a government is harsh and demanding, 
people will spend their time trying to outsmart it.
Happiness is rooted in misery, and misery lurks beneath all joy.
Who knows what could happen tomorrow?
Everything is relative; what's considered proper today may become improper.
Correct appearances may hide dishonesty and sinfulness.
No wonder so many people get confused.
The Masters have sharp minds, not sharp tongues.
They are austere, but never judgmental.
They are straightforward, but not provocative.
They are brilliant, but not flashy." 

-  Translated by Ron Hogan, Chapter 58 

The Wind Ran Out of Breath 

Late that day Jesus said to them, “Let’s go across to the other side.” They took him in the boat as he was. Other boats came along. A huge storm came up. Waves poured into the boat, threatening to sink it. And Jesus was in the stern, head on a pillow, sleeping! They roused him, saying, “Teacher, is it nothing to you that we’re going down?"

Awake now, he told the wind to pipe down and said to the sea, “Quiet! Settle down!” The wind ran out of breath; the sea became smooth as glass. Jesus reprimanded the disciples: “Why are you such cowards? Don’t you have any faith at all?” 

- Mark 4:35-40, The Message

Be Still

"To the Taoist, the virtue suggested by the Mountain was called Keeping Still. The Master said: 'Composure straightens out one’s inner life; righteousness will square one’s external life.' In this way, the Mountain offers us a lesson about sameness as we connect with te and move deeper into the changing landscape. Our need to project past experience upon each event can cause a type of resistance, or turbulence in the great river of life. .Be open, that is all. '" 

~ Ken The Mountain, Way of Tao

"Be still. Follow your inner wisdom. In order to know your inner wisdom, you have to be still. The leader who knows how to be still and feel deeply will probably be effective. But the teacher who chatters and boasts and tries to impress the group has no center and carries little weight" 

~ The Tao of Leadership by John Heider

Therefore, the Lord God,
    the holy one of Israel, says:
In return and rest you will be saved;
    quietness and trust will be your strength

~ Isaiah 30:15 CEV

Tao and the Question of God

 For many, the issues of Religion and God are co-mingled to the point of being simmered down to the question: Does God exist? Many phrase this as a black or white question with definite answers: God either does or doesn’t exist. If you are an atheist, then God doesn’t exist; if you practice a religion, then God exists relative to your belief structure. Taoism offers the third path: Skip the question! The question of God’s existence is irrelevant. God could or could not exist, and either state doesn’t change the way we lead our lives. Our lives are expressions of action between ourselves and the universe. To respect our surrounding environment is a furthering of respect to ourselves. This manner of living doesn’t change regardless of the nature of God. This doesn’t make a Taoist Godless; rather a Taoist considers God a wonderful question to meditate against (much like sharpening a knife against a rock) but to put to the side when dealing with daily concerns. This is where the Personal Tao steps into the equation. If a person has faith in a higher being (if they know the expression of their life matters relative to this belief) then it’s acceptable to live to those beliefs. The point where belief becomes unacceptable is upon forcing faith unto someone else or even oneself. Forcing a view typically comes out of an unsurity of faith. Forcing belief is the attempt to keep faith thru a process of action and subjugation. Such actions flow against finding a true Personal Tao.

~ from A Personal Tao

Counter-Cultural Morality

Especially in our present society we need a countercultural morality.  That requires taking very seriously our responsibility to live rightly and a strong sense that “right” is very different from “wrong.” But it requires an equally strong skepticism about rules that specify do’s and don’ts.  It calls for a radically non-legalistic morality, one that places the well-being of the whole created order above any rules and regulations. I have learned this from Jesus and Paul.  I do not know of better, or even, equally good, teachers, but I know that one can learn much the same lesson in other traditions.  I believe that a sustainable civilization will need to encourage the kind of ethical thinking that produced the countercultural reality of the pre-Constantinian church.  That will be quite different from those later churches that called people to serve themselves and became the upholders of conventional morality.

~John Cobb, Five Foundations for a New Civilization

Moral is often used as a synonym for ethical. That’s not the sense in which it is used here, in “The Tao is good but not moral.” Here, moral means rule-based.

Thus morality will refer to any codified description of good behavior through laws or ideology, religious or secular. I’ll leave “good behavior” undefined, but I will say that (1) being good necessarily entails being compassionate, and (2) you know damn well what it means to be good. ...

From the Tao Te Ching (translated by Ron Hogan),

Get rid of morality.
People will respect each other
and do what’s right.

Thus a big problem arises when a society holds up a particular morality as the definition of goodness. For those aiming to do good, it is needless. For those aiming to do harm, it can be employed to do harm under the guise of doing good. And people are easily fooled by it.

~ The Tao is good but not moral

The Negation of God

 

In the East and the West, there is a long tradition of what they call negative theology, and this is just the tip of that empyreal iceberg. Writing in the fifth century, and pseudonymously for reasonable fear of persecution and even execution, Pseudo-Dionysius the Areopagite took one of the most assertive positions in this manner of comprehending God. Essentially, this theological approach attempts to define God indirectly, by saying what God is not, rather than trying in vain to pin down what exactly God is.

“He is neither number nor order; nor greatness nor smallness; nor equality nor inequality; nor similarity nor dissimilarity; neither is He still, nor moving, nor at rest; neither has He power nor is power, nor is light; neither does He live nor is He life; neither is He essence, nor eternity nor time; nor is He subject to intelligible contact; nor is He science nor truth, nor a king, nor wisdom; neither one nor oneness, nor godhead nor goodness; nor is He spirit according to our understanding, nor a son, nor a father; nor anything else known to us or to any other of the beings or creatures that are or are not.”  [from Mystical Theology]

Four centuries later, the Irish theologian John Scotus Erigena (c. 815-877) worked hard to revive this mystic approach to philosophy. “We do not know what God is,” said Erigina. 

“God Himself does not know what He is because He is not anything. Literally God is not, because He transcends being" ...

God, in the extraordinary category of his own, does not exist. He does something altogether different, and we don’t even have the language to say what that is. But whatever that is, it’s the only thing comparable to what we do before and after we exist in this short stretch of time we call life. Furthermore, I think the Way of Negation actually raises God even higher than traditional theism, by placing him beyond our reach and conceding that he transcends any attempt at a straightforward definition in ordinary affirmative terms, regardless of how many superlatives are sprinkled in.

~ The Tao of Fred 

“The Tao which can be expressed in words is not the eternal Tao; the name which can be uttered is not its eternal name. Without a name, it is the Beginning of Heaven and Earth; with a name, it is the Mother of all things. Only one who is eternally free from earthly passions can apprehend its spiritual essence; he who is ever clogged by passions can see no more than its outer form. These two things, the spiritual and the material, though we call them by different names, in their origin are one and the same. This sameness is a mystery,–the mystery of mysteries. It is the gate of all spirituality.”

 ~ The Tao Te Ching, Chapter One

"Tao cannot be defined. You can not define something according to itself. If you can define a principle, it is not Tao." 

~ The Tao of Leadership by John Heider, Chapter One

Tao & Salvation

Salvation for Taoism (absent the Buddhist influence) is a matter of participation in the eternal return of the natural world, a yielding to chaos followed by spontaneous creation, in a never-ending cycle.  This is not a permanent transcendent state or redemption such as has been articulated in the Abrahamic traditions. For Taoism, salvation is not an escape from this world; rather, it is to become perfectly aligned with the natural world and with the cosmic forces that sustain it.

~Julia Hardy, Patheos

When The Golden Rule Goes Bad ...

The Tao masters also had a version of the Golden Rule. They said, “In dealing with people, you already have the perfect model of behavior inside you. Act with integrity, according to your true nature. Don’t do to others what you wouldn’t want done to you” The Tao Masters continued with a story . . . “Once upon a time, when a seabird landed outside the capital, the Marquis of Lu escorted it to his ancestral temple, had the music of the Ninefold Splendors performed, poured out a cup of old wine, and spread before it a feast of beef and pork. But the bird became dazed, and it pined away, refusing to taste meat or wine. In three days it was dead. This was treating the bird as the marquis would have liked to be treated, not as the bird would have liked to be treated.” The Golden Rule in the wrong hands can be deadly.

~ From The Second Book of Tao by Stephen Mitchell

When we use the Golden Rule as an excuse to retaliate or cause suffering, we have missed the point. The principle of compassionate reciprocity lies at the heart of all spiritual traditions, calling us always to treat all others as we wish to be treated ourselves. Compassion drives us to work tirelessly to alleviate the suffering of our earth, to dethrone ourselves from the center of our world and put another there, and to honor the sanctity of every single human being, treating everybody, without exception, with absolute justice, equity and respect.

Tao and Sabbath

"I remain convinced that individual action must be the basis of all other action. So, here’s one thought. Set aside one day a week as a “No” day. This is not a negative, but a positive. Choose the 'No' yourself. It could be no travel, no purchases, no electricity, no television, no to something that you feel contributes to the momentum behind the denial in our society ... Then – when you’ve found and are satisfied with your 'No' day, tell your friends. Who knows. It might catch on. Posters may appear on lamp posts. People may get together and brainstorm more ways of saying 'No' to conditioning and 'Yes' to Tao."

~"Just Say No!" by Bill Martin

"Overworked Americans need rest, and they need to be reminded that they do not cause the grain to grow and that their greatest fulfillment does not come through the acquisition of material things. Moreover, the planet needs a rest from human plucking and burning and buying and selling. Perhaps, as Sabbath keepers, we will come to live and know these truths more fully, and thus to bring their wisdom to the common solution of humanity’s problems." 

~ Dorothy C. Bass, “Keeping Sabbath” in Practicing Our Faith

  

If you want to become full,
let yourself be empty.
If you want to be reborn,
let yourself die.
   ~ Tao Te Ching, 22

Trust

Faith implies an element of trust.

In Christianity, it is a trust not unlike the trust you will have in a trustworthy friend, who will do you all kinds of favors and support you when necessary, even take your side against enemies.

In Taoism, this trust is of a different nature, for the Tao - as the impersonal, underlying principle of all things - cannot be given human qualities, and cannot be seen as a friend. In fact, the Tao does not discriminate and it "treats" you and your enemies identically. The trust you have in the Tao is more like the trust you will have in, for example, the Law of Gravity.

There is a big difference, though. Unlike the Law of Gravity, the Tao is vague and indefinable. Basically, you are expected to trust something you will never really understand. So, in a way you do need faith, and lots of it.

True faith
is
complete trust
without understanding:
It is to accept
silence
silently.

The Tao is Tao, 22

~The Power of Faith in Tao

Syncretism or Symbiosis?

Texts reveal that the Chinese Church differed from the Western Church in being multi-cultural, pacifist, vegetarian, and egalitarian in terms of gender and class. Thus, in some ways, it was a unique expression of Christianity that could have been closer in some ways to what Christ intended than what has developed in the Western Church.

While the Church of the West developed as a monolithic entity, the Church of the East was more a confederation of churches The fact that they did not force doctrinal agreement allowed more openness in their interpretations of the meaning of the Gospel. One result was that Christianity was able to adapt certain parts of its message to the unique aspects of many different cultures. For example, it addressed issues that were prevalent in Chinese culture but were absent in the West, such as karma and reincarnation.

~ Christianity, Taoism & Qigong in Ancient China--A Surprising Connection!

Selfish Love?

"Nature is definitely not humane. And Lao Tzu says we should be like Nature. We should not be humane either, in the sense that we should not sacrifice ourselves for others. Now that’s going to be very hard for Christian readers to accept, because they’re taught that self-sacrifice is a good thing. Lao Tzu says it’s a lousy thing. This is perhaps the most radical thing he says to a Western ear. Just don’t buy into self sacrifice. Any more that you would ask somebody to sacrifice themselves for you. There’s a sort of reciprocity – that’s the only way I can understand it.  I’ve been thinking about this since Mother Teresa’s recent death. I have never been comfortable with her or with any extreme altruism. It makes me feel inferior, like 'I ought to be like that, but I’m not.' And if I tried to be, it would be the most horrible hyposcrisy. But why, what is it that I’m uncomfortable with? And I think maybe Lao Tzu gives me a little handle on that. In a sense, this kind of self-sacrifice only occurs in a society that is so sick that only somebody going too far can make up for the cruelty of the society."

 ~ The Feminine and the Tao: an interview with Ursula K. LeGuin by Brenda Peterson

"Selfless behavior is immoral when it prevents you from knowing your own intrinsic and equal value as a human being.What kind of love asks you to discount your Self for the sake of the other? What kind of love asks you to deny your needs? Where’s the mutuality? Where’s the trust? Is this the kind of love God wants from us? That God has for us? Selfless love? No! There is no such thing. Everyone wants to be desired. Everyone wants to feel needed. Selfless love may seem ideal, but it eventually denies partners what they need—to be desired and needed as equals. In the words of Fulton Sheen, love is a mutual self-giving which ends in self-recovery. It’s what God wants for all of our relationships. Love means that each and every one of us is created in the image of the divine, co-workers with God in struggling for the liberation of humanity and for a world order that respects each one’s dignity. That’s what I yearn for in my own life. It’s what I want for all of us."

~ Selfish Love? By Matt Braddock, November 16, 2013 

Love in the True Sense of the Word

Know a person by their love;
Know a residence by its love;
Know a bowling team by its love;
Know a time and place by its love;
Know the World by its love.
How can I enter a world of no-pain?
By loving the World,
Even when it’s a goddamn moron.

from The Dude De Ching, Chapter 51

"Nor can any words come up to the inexpressible Good, this One, this Source of all unity, this supra-existent Being. Mind beyond mind, word beyond speech, it is gathered up by no discourse, by no intuition, by no name. It is and it is as no other being is. Cause of all existence, and therefore itself transcending existence, it alone could give an authoritative account of what it really is.... the theologians praise it by every name --and as the Nameless One...."

~ Pseudo-Dionysius: The Complete Works by Pseudo-Dionysius (the Areopagite.)

Religious Vision Needed!

 

"Can we work out a vision of the future, a vision of peace and harmony among peoples and nations; based upon the traditional religious attitude of conflict between humans and nature? If religion is to be on the side of life today, it must shed its former ideology of domination and conquest to adopt the language of harmony, a harmony not only among all humans, but among all creatures. It is time we rejected the religion of hierarchy in which those in higher positions have the right to subjugate those beneath them for a religion of diversity that celebrates the worth and dignity not only of each and every human being, but of each and every species on earth. A religious vision that glories in the human conquest of nature must be replaced by one of harmony and symbiosis between humans and nature, for only when there is fellowship between humans and nature can we speak meaningfully of fellowship among peoples. Such a theology, vital for saving the spiritual heritage of humankind as well as the precious non-human life forms that have evolved on earth, is the urgent task today."

~Tao Te Ching: A New Translation with Commentary 

by Ellen M. Chen

The Taoist Christian?

The Taoist-inclined Christian is one who trusts

1. that Christianity is a way of living not a set of answers;
2. that the winds of the spirit blow in many directions, and that humans can be refreshed by these winds even if they are not Christian; 
3. that we live and move and have our being within the larger context of the Ten Thousand Things, each of which deserves respect, 
4. that the good life lies in living simply and honestly, without pretense and needing to be noticed;  
5. that spontaneous actions, which are natural and devoid of self-consciousness, can be a form of spirituality in their own right; 
6. that one key to understanding life is to imitate water, with its freedom to adapt to new circumstances in fresh ways, 
7. that blind ambition is a dead end and gentleness of spirit a high ideal, 
8.  that the people who are closest to truth are those who don’t speak about it at all, because they know the wisdom of silence. 

Wouldn’t it be nice if all Christians became ever more sensitive to howness and not so preoccupied with whatness, especially with what people believe? Wouldn’t it be nice if, in learning from Taoism, Christians became more…Christian?  We can hope.

~ exceprted from Wouldn’t It Be Nice if Christians Became Taoists? Hope for the Emerging Christian Church 
by Bruce Epperly and Jay McDaniel