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TANG YI

TAOISM AS A LMNG PHILOSOPHY

The difficulty in taking a survey of living lies in the virtual impossibility of frnding a generally accepted view as to what exactly Tao or Taoism is. From the first interpreter in the times of the Warring States down to the contemporary commentator, unanimity has never been reached in respect of the nature of Tooa as depicted in the major classic of Taoism. Tzub , the earliest critic of Lao Tzu', finds in Tao an entity involving definite principles that govern the universe.' After Chuang Tzud and the Yin Yange school, the church Taoists made use of the precept of 'long life and lasting vision' in the Lao Tzu and developed somethin quite alien to the Taoist philosophy. In the early An B interpreted Taoism in terms of the art of rulership.' Wang Pig, in the times of the Three King- doms, reinterpreted the Taoist Non-being as ben tih, which is in tune with l? (the Principle), thus opening the road for the Sung Confucians.' The Neo-Confucians, in their turn, borrowed the Taoist Being and Non-being to form their concepts of the Great Ultimate and Non-ultimate, and borrowed the concept of Tuo to postulate their universal Principle of Existence. Among the modern scholars, Hu Shd calls Lao Tzu a rebel: Fung Yu-lank emphasizes the cyclical pattern of change: whereas Hou wai-lu 1 believes Lao Tzu to be an advocate of primitive communal life. The interpreters of Taoism are no less divergent in the West. James Legge is baffled by its obscurity and declares that 'there has been a tendency to overestimate rather than underestimate its value as a scheme of thought and a discipline for the individual and society . . .We must judge of Lao Tzu that, with all his power of thought, he was only a dreamer." Arthur Waley. on the other hand, discovers Lao Tzu to be a practitioner of trance mysticism? Northrop analyses the Loo Tzu in the light of his own theory of aesthetic contin~um.~Joseph Needham equates Tuo with the order of nature." Homer Dubs compares Tuo with Einstein's space-time." Wing-

Journal of Chinese Philosophy 12 (1985) 39741 7 Copyright 0 1985 by Dialogue Publishing Company, Honolulu. Hawaii, U.S.A. 398 TANG YI

bit Chanm likens Taoism to Whitehead's Organicism.'' Holmes Welch compares the doctrine of Non-being with the modern quantum 'hole theory' of Dirac.13 H. G. Creel interprets the Taoist as an inhuman monster beyond good and evil;'4 Holmes Welch ascribes to him compassion and love; while Lin Tungchi" subdivides him into the rebel, the recluse, the rogue and the returnist .Is Now, in the face of such divergent opinions, what are we to make of Taoism as a living philosophy? Fortunately most of the commentators seem to have some common ground. If we look more closely at the foregoing appraisals, for instance, we will find that there is a basic conception at the root of most of the explications, and that is wez' or nonaction. The universe as the Taoist sees it works by nonaction rather than by action; the mystic grasps the meaning of Tao by means of Ulthdte vacuity and tran- quility; the compassionate sage tries to save the world from the vicious circle of aggression by practising nonaction; the rebel personifies the initial stage of the negation of too much government, and so forth. Since whichever way you look at the matter there is no escaping the central idea of nonaction, we may be justfied in using it as the starting-point in our brief survey of Taoism as living thought. The fist thing that catches my eye, as I look around for living Taoism in China, is the large extent to which the Chinese are speaking a sort of Taoistic language. There are in current Chinese so many phrases and sayings that stress the value of nonaction, the negative, the weak, the way things revert to the- opposite where overaction is involved. Let us examine the following :

Wu ji bi # (hrshed to one extreme, a thing will go to the other extreme). Xiang xiang chengq (The contraries complete each other). Yu su bu dar (The more you hurry up a thing, the less likely you are to get it). Yi.yi dai laos (Wait at ease for the opponent to exhaust

himself). ' An zhi ruo sut (Bear it with equanimity). Duo ci yi ju' (Don't make an unnecessary move).